The Science of Life
The scientific study of life and living organisms.
What is biology?
Though a car moves and uses energy, it's not alive because it cannot do this on its own.
What is reproduce, evolve, or have cells?
This is the first step of the scientific method, often prompted by an observation.
What is asking a question?
The variable that a scientist intentionally changes or manipulates to see its effect.
What is the independent variable?
These six elements—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—are the primary building blocks of all life's organic molecules.
What are the CHONPS elements?
A group of similar cells working together to perform a specific function.
What is a tissue?
The ability of an organism to maintain a stable internal environment, such as regulating your body temperature.
What is homeostasis?
A testable, proposed explanation for an observation. It’s an "if...then..." statement.
What is a hypothesis?
In an experiment testing how different amounts of water affect plant height, the measured height of the plants is this type of variable.
What is the dependent variable?
This unique property of water, caused by an unequal sharing of electrons, allows it to dissolve salts and form hydrogen bonds.
What is polarity?
All the living organisms of different species, like deer, squirrels, and oak trees, interacting in a forest.
What is a community?
A virus is not considered truly alive by many biologists because it cannot reproduce without this.
What is a host cell?
A student hypothesizes, "If I give my plant more sunlight, then it will grow taller." In this experiment, the student would collect this to analyze their results.
What is data?
The group in an experiment that does not receive the treatment and is used as a baseline for comparison.
What is the control group?
These are the monomers, or building blocks, that join together via peptide bonds to form complex polymers called proteins.
What are amino acids?
From molecules to the entire planet, this is the term for the different scales of study in biology.
What are the levels of biological organization?
This characteristic of life involves all the chemical reactions in an organism to build up or break down materials; it's how life processes energy.
What is metabolism?
In science, this is a well-substantiated explanation supported by a vast body of evidence, like the theory of evolution or cell theory.
What is a scientific theory?
To ensure a fair test, factors like temperature, soil type, and pot size are kept the same for all plants in an experiment. These are known as these.
What are controlled variables?
These proteins act as biological catalysts, speeding up chemical reactions by lowering the required activation energy.
What are enzymes?
This regulatory mechanism, common at all levels of life, is one where the end product of a pathway inhibits an earlier step in that same pathway, preventing over-accumulation.
What is negative feedback?
n infectious agent composed solely of a misfolded protein, it challenges our definition of life because it can self-propagate and cause disease without any genetic material like DNA or RNA.
What is a prion?
Unlike a scientific theory which provides a well-substantiated explanation for why something happens, this is a statement, often mathematical, that describes a consistent pattern in nature but doesn't explain the mechanism behind it.
What is a scientific law?
In clinical trials, this rigorous study design is used to prevent bias, where neither the participants nor the researchers know who is receiving the experimental treatment and who is receiving the placebo.
What is a double-blind study?
The specific, three-dimensional folding of a single polypeptide chain, dictated by interactions between the amino acid R-groups, creates this level of protein structure, which is essential for the protein’s function.
What is the tertiary structure?