Building Blocks of Life
This chemical element is essential to life and serves as the primary component of almost all organic biological molecules.
What is carbon?
This is the basic structural and functional unit of all living organisms.
What is a cell?
This process of maintaining a stable internal balance is a primary job of the plasma membrane.
What is homeostasis?
This passive process describes the net movement of particles from an area of high concentration to an area of lower concentration.
What is diffusion?
These highly folded, energy-converting powerhouses break the chemical bonds in sugar to generate usable energy for the cell.
What are mitochondria?
This class of macromolecule includes glucose and functions primarily as a central energy source and cellular support structure.
What are carbohydrates?
This distinct central organelle houses the cell's genetic material, distinguishing eukaryotic cells from prokaryotic ones.
What is the nucleus?
This key property allows the plasma membrane to let some substances pass through while strictly keeping others out.
What is selective permeability?
This type of passive transport uses dedicated channel or carrier proteins to help ions and small molecules cross the membrane without using energy.
What is facilitated diffusion?
Unlike most other organelles, these protein-manufacturing factories lack an enclosing membrane.
What are ribosomes?
These molecules contain primarily carbon and hydrogen, and are utilized by cells to store long-term energy
What are lipids?
According to cell theory, this is the only origin from which new, living cells can arise.
What are previously existing cells?
In a phospholipid molecule, this specific region is nonpolar and faces inward, away from the watery environment.
What are the fatty acid/lipid tails?
This active process allows a cell to surround and engulf large external substances within a detached piece of the plasma membrane.
What is endocytosis?
Found in plants, fungi, and animals, this supporting framework is made of long, thin protein fibers like microtubules and microfilaments.
What is the cytoskeleton?
This specific covalent bond links smaller amino acid monomers together to build complex protein polymers.
What is a peptide bond?
This type of organism is smaller and simpler, lacks membrane-bound organelles, and represents most unicellular life like bacteria.
What is a prokaryotic cell?
This component prevents fatty acid tails from sticking together, contributing directly to the fluid nature of the membrane.
What is cholesterol?
This specific term describes the point reached when particles continue moving but their overall concentration remains uniform.
What is dynamic equilibrium?
This flat stack of membranes modifies, sorts, and packages newly created proteins into transport sacs called vesicles.
What is the Golgi apparatus?
These three structures make up macromolecules, constructed out of repeating elemental building blocks called nucleotides, are responsible for transmitting and storing genetic traits.
What are nitrogen bases, sugar, and phosphate groups?
These are hairlike structures that aid locomotion in prokaryotes.
What are cillia?
This model concept visualizes the plasma membrane as a flexible "sea" where molecules move dynamically, creating a surface pattern.
What is the fluid mosaic model?
In animal cells, this specific transport protein uses active energy to pump sodium and potassium ions against their concentration gradients.
What is the NA+/K+ ATPase pump?
This cell structure is uniquely composed of peptidoglycan in bacteria, but is made of cellulose in plant cells.
What is the cell wall?