Topic List for Semester Final

This is a list of topics that you should know for the Semester Final!

Ecology
Gross vs. Net productivity
Pyramids of biomass, energy (10% rule), trophic levels
Community relationships - predator-prey, parasitism, mutualism, commensalism, camouflage, mimicry
     Producers, consumers and decomposers
Carbon and nitrogen cycles
Carrying capacity
Exponential growth
Food webs
Organizational Hierarchy - Biosphere, Community, Population, Organism

Biochemistry
Hydrolysis vs. dehydration synthesis reactions
The properties, building blocks, elements, and examples within each of the biomolecule groups: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and nucleic acids
Enzymes - catalyst, substrate, active site, induced fit, how enzymes speed up reactions, activation energy, effect of pH, temperature, cofactors, inhibitors.  Allosteric regulation: comptetitive vs. non-competitive inhibitors.

Cell Parts
Eukaryotes vs. Prokaryotes
Plant cells vs. animal cells
Functions of cell parts
Endomembrane transport. Example: Rough ER --> vesicle --> golgi --> vesicle --> cell membrane
Cytoskeleton: microfilaments, intermediate filaments, microtubules
Structure of cilia and flagella

Cell Transport
Structure of cell membrane
     Role of phospholipids, proteins, cholesterol
Active vs. Passive transport
Osmosis and direction of water movement
How the properties of molecules determine how they cross the membrane
Hypertonic, hypotonic and isotonic solutions

Cell Communication
Signal reception, transduction and response
communication at various distances: cell-to-cell, local and long-distance

Mitosis, Cytokinesis, and the cell cycle
Purpose/ outcome of mitosis
Stage at which DNA is replicated
Somatic cells vs. gametes
Process of mitosis, stages and main events
Key events of the cell cycle
Amount of DNA at each stage

Meiosis
The goal of the complete process, goal of meiosis I, goal of meiosis II
Stages and main events.
Comparison of mitosis and meiosis
Variation due to meiosis - crossing over, independent assortment, fertilization
Haploid vs. diploid
Replicated vs. unreplicated chromosomes
Amount of DNA at each stage

DNA Structure
Contributions of: Franklin, Chargaff, Hershey and Chase, Watson and Crick
Know the diagram!  Be able to label 5' and 3', purine vs. pyrimidine, H-bonds, TCGA, parts of a nucleotide, # the carbons of deoxyribose

DNA Replication
Comparison of DNA to RNA
Contribution of Meselson and Stahl
Roles of the following: helicase, topoisomerase, single-strand binding proteins, DNA polymerase I, DNA polymerase III, ligase, primers
Directionality of replication
Continuous replication on leading strand vs. discontinuous replication on lagging strand
Okazaki fragments
How errors of replication are minimized

Gene Expression
Transcription vs. Translation
Codon and why it contains three nucleotides
Using the codon chart
mRNA, tRNA, rRNA
Mutations: Point (silent, nonsense or missense) or Frameshift (insertion or deletion)
Transcription factors, promoter, RNA polymerase
mRNA processing - introns vs. exons, 5' cap, 3' poly-A tail
Stop codon/ release factor

Control of Gene Expression
Operon theory in prokaryotes:
Roles of promoter, operator, repressor, regulatory gene, corepressor (ex. tryptophan), structural genes
Inducible vs. Repressible operons
Goal of trp vs. lac operons
Active vs. Inactive Repressors and the effect on the operon