Cell Biology
What is the difference between a prokaryotic cell and a eukaryotic cell?
Eukaryotic cells contain a nucleus
What are alleles?
Expression or form of a gene in matching pairs.
Alleles genetically influence many parts of our life (how we look, risk factors for disease, etc.); while they can be identical, alleles often contain slight differences (variants – contain nucleotide sequence variations at a given genomic location)
What is a carcinogen?
Any substance that increases the likelihood of cancer
What event typically drives communication between neurons?
Action potential
Where did the HeLa cell line come from?
Henrietta Lacks
*HeLa cell line – derived from cervical cancer cells, developed in the 1950s by George Otto Gey (cell biologist, John Hopkins Hospital)
Which organelle acts as the skeleton of the cell?
The cytoskeleton
What is a codon?
A group of three nucleotides that are read together as a code for a specific amino acid.
What is the field of science that studies the immune system?
Immunology
Name one cell type in your retina?
Rods OR Cones OR Ganglion Cells OR Biploar cells
Who was the first Latina woman to become a faculty member and scientist in the University of California system?
Elma Gonzalez
What is the endosymbiotic theory?
The theory that states that the mitochondria was a prokaryote that an ancient cell gobbled up and formed a symbiotic relationship with
Who is credited as the father of genetics?
Gregor Mendel
What is apoptosis?
Programmed cell death
Why do we have a blind spot?
There are no rods and cones at the spot where the optic nerve leaves the eye
Who was the first African American to publish a research article in the journal Science?
Charles Henry Turner
What does methylene blue stain?
DNA/the nucleus
What is the charge of DNA?
Negative
What are approaches to fighting cancer? Briefly explain three.
1) Surgery: removal of the primary tumor – can be a cure but more commonly needs to be coupled with another form of therapy
2) Radiotherapy: radiation at the site of cancer – a high dosage of x-/gamma-rays will kill the cancer cells, but they also introduce mutations in the DNA of healthy cells thereby increasing the risk of cancer development in the future
3) Chemotherapy: use of chemicals to kill cancer cells – systemic (whole body) treatment that can cause cells (both healthy, malignant) to die by disrupting cell division/growth
Given that an electrical signal reaches a neuron’s cell body, what’s a reason it won’t fire an action potential?
The cell does not reach its activation threshold OR its in a hyperpolarized state OR other reasonable answers
Who was one of the three scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008 for the discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP)? Bonus point if you can give a fact about GFP and what it is used for
Drs Roger Y. Tsien, Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie
What is an organoid?
A small and simple version of an organ that is derived from stem cells. Organoids are used to study development and disease in the lab and can be models for new treatments
What observation and hypothesis were made that established the concept of evolution?
Observation: characteristics of many animals vary greatly among the different environments
Hypothesis: separate species may have arisen from an original ancestor
Why is cancer referred to as a ‘disease of age’?
The percentage of incidence is much higher after 60 years of age – mutations accumulate in our tissues throughout life, overall damage to cell populations also increases with time. Hence, the longer we live, the more common/likely it is for certain types of cancer to develop.
At which point in the visual pathway do neurons stop encoding interpretable visual features? Why?
Higher visual areas. Our brain processes information then constructs the image that we perceive
SUPER BONUS: What are our names?
Grace/Raymundo/Rianna/Gaby