Biochemistry
This selectively permeable barrier, composed of a phospholipid bilayer and embedded proteins, orchestrates the movement of substances in and out of the cell.
What is the plasma membrane?
This nitrogenous base is incorporated into a growing RNA strand by complementary pairing with adenine as the DNA template is transcribed.
What is uracil?
This principle, central to population genetics, states that allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of evolutionary influences.
What is the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?
This organelle acts as the post-processing and logistics center of the cell, modifying, packaging, and directing proteins and lipids for their final destinations.
What is the Golgi apparatus?
This property of water, resulting from hydrogen bonding, allows it to resist changes in temperature and maintain stable environments for organisms.
What is high specific heat?
The passive, yet directional, movement of water molecules across a selectively permeable membrane, dictated entirely by solute concentration gradients.
What is osmosis?
This process, occurring in the inner mitochondrial membrane, uses a proton gradient to power ATP synthesis via the enzyme ATP synthase.
What is oxidative phosphorylation?
This type of symbiotic relationship benefits one organism while the other remains unaffected, such as barnacles attaching to whales.
What is commensalism?
This structural polysaccharide, found in the cell walls of plants, provides rigidity and is composed of glucose monomers.
What is cellulose?
The intricate mechanism by which cells engulf extracellular materials via vesicular transport, encompassing specialized forms such as phagocytosis and pinocytosis.
What is endocytosis?
This molecule frees usable energy upon the hydrolysis of its terminal phosphate bond, fueling cellular processes.
What is ATP?
This type of mutation involves the insertion or deletion of nucleotides in a DNA sequence, altering the reading frame of the genetic code.
What is a frameshift mutation?
This evolutionary phenomenon occurs when a population's size is drastically reduced due to a sudden event, such as a natural disaster, leading to a loss of genetic diversity and potential inbreeding.
What is the bottleneck effect?
The specific type of bond responsible for stabilizing the secondary structure of proteins, such as α-helices and β-pleated sheets.
What is a hydrogen bond?
The term that describes what happens when a plant cell is placed in a hypotonic solution.
What is turgidity?
The critical molecular player at the end of the electron transport chain, accepting electrons to drive the formation of water during aerobic respiration.
What is oxygen?
This post-transcriptional modification, occurring in eukaryotic cells, involves the removal of non-coding sequences from pre-mRNA and the precise joining of coding sequences to form mature mRNA.
What is RNA splicing?
This ecological concept refers to the theoretical maximum growth rate of a population under ideal environmental conditions, without limitations from resource availability, competition, or predation.
What is biotic potential?