List and describe the characteristics of living organisms. 

Cumulative exam study guide.  BIOL 1740 – Fall 2022

Cregan

Chapter 1:

1. List and describe the characteristics of living organisms.
2. Summarize the steps of scientific method.
3. Review/ define the following terms:  Hypothesis Control treatment, controlled variable, independent variable, and dependent variable.
   1. Look back at lab 3 and identify each of the above variables from your experiment.

 Chapter 2:

4. Describe how a covalent bond forms, give an example of a compound formed through covalent bonds, and define the term molecule.
5. Define four special properties of water and give an example of how each property is improtant to life.

Chapter 3:

6. List the four major classes of macromolecules and give the monomer or subunits, for each.
7. Distinguish between monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides and give examples and functions for each.

 Chapter 4:

1. Distinguish between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells.  (What are some similarities and some differences?).
2. List several organelles that both plant and animal cells have – and give their function.
3. List at least 2 ways that plant and animal cells are different from each other.

Chapter 5:

1. Describe the detailed structure of a cell membrane.
2. Define passive transport and distinguish between passive transport through diffusion and facilitated diffusion.
3. Distinguish between solutions that are hypertonic, hypotonic, and isotonic to a cell’s content.  What would happen to animal cells in each of these solutions?

Chapter 6:

1. What is ATP?  Why is it so important to cells?
2. Describe how enzymes are able to catalyze chemical reactions.

Chapter 7:

1. Summarize the basics of what happens in each of the following stages of aerobic respiration:
   • Glycolysis
   • oxidation of pyruvate
   • citric acid cycle
   • electron transport (oxidative phosphorylation/chemiosmosis).
2. What is the role of oxygen during cellular respiration?
3. Where in a cell do each of the listed stages of cellular respiration take place?
4. Which of the following types of organisms undergo cellular respiration?

• Plants?  Animals?  Algae?  Fungi?

Chapter 8:

1. Describe the two main stages of photosynthesis including where the stages occur and what the products and reactants for each stage are.
2. What role does chlorophyll play in photosynthesis?
3. Which of the following types of organisms undergo photosynthesis?
   • Plants? Animals? Algae? Fungi?

Chapter 10:

23. List the phases of the cell cycle and describe events that occur during each phase.
24. Describe the phases of mitosis.

Chapter 11:

1. Name the three main sources of genetic variation in sexually reproducing organisms.
2. List the phases of meiosis I and meiosis II and describe the events characteristic of each phase.

Chapter 12:

1. Define the terms genotype, homozygous, heterozygous, and phenotype.
2. Be able to complete simple genetics problems involving dominant and recessive genes, incomplete dominance, or the human blood group (co-dominance).  For examples go over the sample problems we did during lecture – NOTE: any genetics problems on the final exam will be fairly simple and none will be 2 trait crosses!

Chapter 13:

29. What is a nondisjunction? Give an example of a chromosomal abnormality that can result from a nondisjunction of sex chromosomes and an example from autosomes.

Chapter 14:

1. What are the three parts of one nucleotide and how do these relate to the structure of DNA?
2. Describe, in a general way, the process of replication of DNA.
3. Below I have given you one side of a strand of DNA.  Write in the complementary bases that would form the other side of the DNA strand.  You don’t need to draw the backbone here.

5′ ACCGTTAACG 3′

Chapter 15:

1. Summarize what happens in transcription and in translation.  Try to summarize each step in 1-2 sentence.
2. If I give you a template DNA sequence, be able to determine the resulting protein (polypeptide) by first writing the complementary mRNA and then using an mRNA codon table.

• For example: Find the amino acid sequence that would be produced from this template DNA.
  • Template DNA:             TACCATTTGCGACTA

Chapter 18:

35. Define the term evolution.
36. Describe natural selection.
37. Describe two of the pieces of evidence of evolution.