Gen.Bio 1406 Review
GENERAL BIOLOGY CHAPTER REVIEW QUESTIONS
Chapter 1
1. List five characteristics that all living things have in common.
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2. Describe the hierarchy of organization of life. - 3. What are the two main categories of cells and how are they different? Discuss
- Cell Theory. Who first observed cells?
- 4. Define metabolism, anabolism, catabolism.
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5. List and describe five main biological themes. What does unity in diversity mean
6. Define taxonomy ; name the three domains of life. Describe the current- Kingdoms into which organisms may be grouped.
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7. Who were Darwin and Wallace? Describe evolutionary theory. -
8. Discuss the scientific method. - 9. List general taxonomic categories starting with Kingdom.
- 10. How many species have been identified?
- 11. In the fossil record, the oldest cells are determined to be how old?
- What kind of cells are they?
Chapter 2
1. How does atomic number differ from atomic mass?
2. Name three subatomic particles and describe how they make up
the structure of an atom.
3. Which elements comprise 96% of living matter?
4. Name a trace element and describe its importance to health.
5. What are isotopes and why are they important?
6. When atoms join together, the next higher order structure is called a ?
7. What joins atoms together?
8. Name and describe three types of chemical bonds.
9. Chemical properties and reactivity of atoms/elements are due to what?
10. What is the octet rule? What is valence?
11. The 1s orbital holds a maximum of how many electrons?
12. What are ions?
Chapter 3
1. Describe four properties of water that make it useful for life.
2. What kind of bond exists between water molecules?
3. What type of bond is responsible for water’s specific heat, cohesion,
adhesion, etc.?
4. At what temperature are water molecules densest?
5. Water is polar? Explain.
6. Which ion determines the level of acidity in a solution?
7. Give examples of a strong acid and a strong base.
8. The range of the pH scale is? Neutral pH is?
9. Describe how to make a 1 Molar solution of glucose.
10. Define: buffer, mole, calorie.
Chapter 4
1. Organic chemistry is the study of what element and its compounds?
2. Draw the atomic structures of C, H, O, N, S, P.
3. Carbon can share how many electron pairs with other elements and itself?
4. Describe the types of isomers.
5. Define functional group. Draw and name all of the functional groups
6. Which functional groups are found in an amino acid?
7. Which functional group can act like an acid and donate H+ to solution?
8. Which functional group is important in the folding of proteins?
9. Which functional group is polar and creates alcohols?
10. What is the pH of pure water?
Chapter 5
1. Name the type of chemical reaction that synthesizes polymers from small subunits
called monomers.
2. Name the four categories of macromolecules from which living tissue is constructed.
3. Give examples of monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides and a function for each of them.
4. Give 5 functions for lipids.
5. Of what are fat molecules composed?
6. How do phospholipids differ from fats?
7. Of what importance is cholesterol to cell structure?
8. What are the subunits of proteins called and how many biologically active ones are there?
9. List five functions for proteins.
10. Describe the primary , secondary , tertiary, quarternary structure of proteins.
11. Show how two amino acids can be joined together.
12. What is the relationship between a gene in the DNA and protein structure?
13. What are the subunits of nucleic acids called?
14. Which nitrogenous bases are purines and which are pyrimidines?
15. What are the bonding rules?
16. Name the scientists that discoved the structure of DNA.
17. How do DNA and RNA differ chemically?
18. List three types of RNA and give functions for each.
19. In reference to DNA, what does anti-parallel mean?
20. What is the name of the process by which DNA copies itself?
CHAPTER 8
1. Define energy. List three types of energy and define free energy.
2. State the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics and define entropy.
How are free energy and entropy related?
3. State the equation for the change in free energy.
4. Describe how exergonic and endergonic reactions differ. Which one can happen
without an input of energy from the environment and is energy releasing?
5. For what does Keq stand? What is the change in free energy at chemical
equilibrium?
6. Draw the structure of ATP. What is its function in the cell?
7. Name the sugar in ATP. What other molecule does ATP resemble?
8. How much energy is stored in glucose? How much energy is released
when one phosphate is removed from ATP?
9. Write the equation for the regeneration of ATP.
10. What does "coupling" mean" in reference to ATP?
11. List three main energy(ATP) generating processes. Define phosphorylation.
12. What are enzymes and how do they work? Write the enzyme-substrate
chemical reaction. Why is the active site important? When enzymes are
denatured, what happens to the active site? What do we call the molecule
upon which the enzyme acts?
13. List four factors that may influence enzyme activity. Define denaturation.
14. List three ways by which enzymes can be inhibited.
15. Metabolic pathways may be shut down in cells when sufficient product is made.
Name and illustrate the process at work here.
Chapter 12
1. During which stage of the cell cycle does a cell spend most of the time?
2. Name the three stages of Interphase and mention something important
that happens in each stage.
3. During which stage of Interphase does DNA replication occur? What happens
during DNA replication?
4. Do Procaryotic cells have the process of mitosis? How do they reproduce
or divide?
5. Name and draw the stages of Mitosis and briefly discuss how they are
recognized. As a cell division process, what does mitosis accomplish?
6. At which stages of mitosis do the chromosomes consist of sister chromatids?
At which stages are they single chromosomes(DNA molecules)?
7. What is the centromere? What are kinetochores?
8. If there are 10 centromeres, how many chromosomes are there? How many
chromatids?
9. If cells no longer undergo mitosis, in which stage of the cell cycle are they?
10. At which stage of mitosis do centromeres divide and two sets of chromosomes
are visible?
11. Define cytokinesis. Describe cytokinesis in animal cells and plant cells.
12. Regulation of the cell cycle is under the control of which two biochemicals? To
which major macromolecule group do they belong?
13. What is Cancer ? Name some abnormal characteristics of cancer cells.
14. How is it that cancer develops in otherwise normal tissue? Define: benign,
tumor, metastasize.
Chapter 14
1. Describe the work of Gregor Mendel. What laws of genetics did he discover?
Why was the importance of his work not recognized during his lifetime?
2. Define: dominant, recessive, homozygous, heterozygous, phenotype,
genotype.
3. How many characters in pea plants did Mendel consider ?
4. How many characters are considered in a monohybrid cross? Dihybrid cross?
5. Mendel used true breeding parental plants. What does this mean? What are
the progeny of the parental generation cross called?
6. Perform the cross: heterozygous purple flower plant times white flower plant
and give phenotypic and genotypic ratios.
7. What are the possible gamete combinations for a plant that is YySs?
8. Why are test crosses performed?
9. Incomplete dominance occurs in certain plants. Describe how you might
recognize this.
10. List and describe three kinds of gene interactions.
11. Describe two recessively inherited human disorders and two
dominantly inherited human disorders.
12. Describe three procedures which may be performed on the fetus
to detect genetic errors. How do they determine the presence
of the errors?
13. Genetics problem: The baby's blood type is "O". The mother's
blood type is "A". To establish paternity, blood tests were
performed on two men; Herb's blood type was AB, and
and Allen's was "B". Can you rule out one of these men as
the father?
Chapter 16
1. If you grow T2 phage in media with radioactive isotopes, which part of the phage
becomes labeled with phosphorus 32 and which part with sulfur 35? Name the
scientists who performed an experiment such as this.
2. In DNA replication, which enzyme synthesizes the leading strand in a contin-
uous manner?
3. Give the functions of the following enzymes: helicase, DNA ligase, primase.
4. What are Okazaki fragments and on which strand are they found?
5. Errors can be made during the DNA replication process. What mechanisms
are available to detect and correct errors?
6. Describe lagging strand replication.
7. How is DNA replication different in Procaryotic cells vs. Eucaryotic?
8. Why was there a controversy concerning whether proteins or nucleic acids
could better store genetic information?
9. List the four scientists who discovered the structure of DNA. Which of them
received the Nobel Prize?
10. Name the laboratory technique that Rosalind Franklin used to take photos
of DNA.
11. Review the structure of DNA and RNA.
12. Eucaryotic DNA is associated with specific types of proteins that allow
for "compaction" or packing. What are these proteins called?
13. A DNA packing unit is called a ?
14. List the different levels of DNA packing. At which level of packing is
accurate transcription possible?
Chapter 17
1. Beadle and Tatum's important work with auxotrophs of Neurospora crassa
established the concept that one gene codes for one _________. Later
this concept was broadened to state that one ___________ codes for
one ________________.
2. Protein biosynthesis consists of two processes of information transfer.
What are the processes called? Describe the flow of information starting
with DNA.
3. Name the enzyme that controls transcription. To what area in the gene
structure does it bind?
4. The segments of Eucaryotic genes that must be removed in order to make
a useful mRNA molecule are called ______________. The segments that
are coding segments are joined together; these are the ____________.
5. Name the complex of snRNPs that performs the mRNA processing.
6. Do Procaryotic genes contain introns?
7. If a protein contains 150 amino acids, what is the minimum number of
nucleotides needed to code for it? How many codons?
8. The genetic code is written in _______ language, is a ________ code,
and is _____________, i.e. having multiple codons for certain amino
acids.
9. What would happen if introns are accidently left in the processed mRNA?
10. Given the following gene sequence, CCG TTT UUU GUG CGG ACT, write
the mRNA and the amino acid sequence that would result.
11. Which type of RNA contains an anticodon? Draw this type and label the Loop
where the anticodon is found. Which loop has it?
12. List the steps in order of the translation process.
13. Of what macromolecules are ribosomes composed? What size are Procaryotic
ribosomes and Eucaryotic ones?
14. If the anticodon is AAA, the amino acid being carried by the tRNA is _______.
15. Most of the RNA in a cell is of which type?
16. The initiation codon on the mRNA is associated with the P-site or A-site on a
functional ribosome? All incoming tRNAs enter via the P-site or A-site? What
is the E-site?
17. How many stop codons are there? What happens when a stop codon in the
mRNA is read?
Chapter 19
1. One of the first viruses to be studied was? What did Beijerinck discover about
viruses? For what did Dr.Wendell Stanley receive the Nobel Prize?
2. What is a virus and how did they originate?
3. Name two criteria for taxonomic classification of viruses.
4. Describe viral structure. Of what two main biochemicals are viruses composed?
5. How does a capsid differ from a capsomere?
6. List the types of nucleic acid that could comprise a viral genome.
7. Describe the stages of the phage lytic cycle.
8. What do we mean by lysogeny? What is a prophage?
9. HIV belongs to what group of viruses? What enzyme is found in this viral group?
What is the enzyme's function?
10. What are prions and viroids?
11. Name and describe three types of gene transfer in bacteria.
12. Name three childhood diseases caused by viruses. Are they DNA or RNA viruses?
13. What art transposons, who discovered them, and why are they important?
14. Define "operon" and describe the Operon Model. What are two categories of
operon; the "lac" operon belongs to which of these categories?
15. Metabolic pathways are regulated by what type of mechanisms?
CHAPTER 18
1.
2.
3.
4. What is the product of a gene? If the gene product is not completed, is the gene expressed?
5. If the primary transcript does not undergo RNA processing in the nucleus, how might this
affect the gene product?
6. How does methylation of DNA affect transcription?
7. What percentage of the human genome codes for genes that are transcribed and translated?
8. What do we mean by "junk" DNA?
9. Briefly describe the Multi-step Theory of Cancer Development.
10. Define: proto-oncogene, oncogene, benign, carcinogenic, metastasize.
Chapter 20
1. Briefly list the steps of the gene cloning procedure. By what process are
recombinant plasmids put into bacteria so the gene may be expressed?
2. What do we mean by a "recombinant DNA molecule"?
3. What two enzymes are necessary to produce recombinant DNA?
4. List three possible vectors that may store genes or move genes.
5. What function do restriction enzymes perform in genetic engineering?
Where are these enzymes found naturally?
6. List a few applications for gene cloning. What are animals or plants called that
have had a human gene inserted into their genome?
7. Fragments of DNA may be separated using a technique called? When the DNA
bands are stained and viewed/photographed we see a DNA ______________.
8. What is name of the enzyme that seals the "sticky ends" of the gene into a
plasmid or into a recombinant DNA molecule?
9. For what is the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technique used?
10. What is the Genome Project?
11. What are RFLPs (restriction fragment length polymorphisms)?
12. What contribution did Dr. Fred Sanger make to the field of DNA analysis?
