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Chapter 1 Outline:
Biology: the study of life
• a brief history of the Earth
Chapter 1: Introduction: notes
• the scientific method
• what is life?
• important concepts:
The first section of this set of notes (A History of the
Earth) is complete but later sections have gaps that
- obeying physical laws
you will need to fill in. - life comes from previous life
- cells; the central dogma
- metabolism
Learning outcomes are shown at the end of this, and - evolution
all following, note packages - ecological systems
- the human footprint
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• Earth and our solar system ~ 4.6 billion
A Brief History of the Earth
years old
• ‘big bang’ ~ 13.7 billion yrs ago • formed from the coming together of pre-
existing debris
• stars and planets eventually formed,
• elements settled by density in early Earth
- lasted for billions of years
- were destroyed • cooling of surface formed a rocky crust over
- new stars and planets formed… a hot interior
• oldest rocks > 4 billion years old
• new rock continually being formed; existing
rock is eroding
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• surface water stabilized into oceans > 4 • first life ~ 3.5 billion years ago
billion years ago
• used molecules as building blocks and
• atmosphere had nitrogen (N2), energy sources
carbon dioxide (CO2),
cyanide (HCN), • they were small and single-celled
ammonia (NH3),
water (H2O)
but little molecular oxygen (O2)
some of these compounds combined to
form organic (carbon-containing)
molecules
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• by 2 billion years ago, living things had • first animals appear ~ 600 million years ago
altered the atmosphere and waters of the
• the first plants and fungi by 500 million years
earth
ago
• some were adding O2 (via photosynthesis)
• living things have changed over time
• rising O2 levels probably poisoned many (= evolution)
kinds of early life
• today there are millions of different types
• others then began using O2 in their (species) of living organisms
chemistry of life (in cellular respiration)
• millions of species have arisen and gone
• larger, more complex cells (Eukaryotes) extinct in the past
appeared ~ 2 billion years
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• the species today are descended from ones Should you believe the ideas within this course
that lived earlier or the text?
- all the way back to the first organisms
• What type of evidence convinces you of
something?
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Science; what is it? The Scientific Method
1) Organization of thought:
• one method for explaining how things work a) making observations
b) asking a question: e.g. why does this
- it follows testable evidence happen?
- if the evidence changes, the
explanations change c) coming up with hypotheses that could
answer the question
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2) Hypothesis testing • a null hypothesis (H0) predicts that an
experiment will show
- by testing if the predictions that the
hypotheses make are correct
- then design experiments so as to try to • alternate hypotheses (HA) predict
disprove the hypotheses
• if (and only if) H0 can be rejected, are we left
with any unrejected alternate hypothesis
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- we can’t prove anything 3) Publication
a ‘magazine’
Why not? • in a refereed journal
- each article is only published if
- science shaves away the hypotheses that
are wrong
• beware info from other sources
• not all refereed journals are equally reliable
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The best experiments have: - controlled conditions
- controlled conditions What does that mean?
- large sample sizes Why worry about it?
- precise, objective measurements
- accurate recording
- randomization
- ‘blinding’
- an appropriate way to analyze the
results
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- large sample sizes (why?) - precise, objective measurements
- accurate recording
- of methods and results
why?
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- each subject randomly assigned to - single blind: the subjects do not know
either a treatment or the control which treatment they are receiving
Why? Why blinding?
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- may need an appropriate way to There are several things that could cause a
analyze the results treatment group and a control group to show
different results:
• may need a ______________to help
decide if we should accept or reject H0 a) they were different to begin with
to begin w
b) an actual treatment effect
c) chance, i.e., random effects
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• statistical tests estimate the _________ that
a difference between treatments is due to • if the probability of any treatment difference
random, background variation being due to chance is less than ____
then it is agreed that there is a real
difference between treatments, i.e.
the difference is statistically significant…
and we can ______ Ho
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What is Life? A Closer Look at Some Key Concepts…
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1. Life can be studied at different levels biosphere
of complexity
ecosystem and biome
organelles community
cells
population
tissue molecules
organism
organ
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2. Living and non-living things made of the 3. Living and non-living things follow the same
same elements but in different proportions physical laws
e.g. the first law of thermodynamics:
-
-
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e.g. the 2nd law of thermodynamics: • with each E transformation, some E
becomes unusable
• E transformations tend to increase disorder,
randomness, i.e., ________
i.e. organized forms of E are
converted to _____
=
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• living things are ordered. Do they defy the 4. Today, all life comes from pre-existing life
second law?
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5. Cells • _________ cells also have internal
membranes that form specialized internal
• the smallest self-replicating unit that has all structures called
the properties of life
• all organisms are made of cells
• most are microscopic; some are specialized
Smaller, simpler
• all have a plasma membrane that controls cells with only
what can enter and leave a cell a plasma membrane
=
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• cells carry out chemical reactions: 5. Evolution
- breakdown molecules • evolution (change) is the theme that links
- build molecules all levels of biology
- transform energy
• change can be caused by several
• all use the molecule ATP (adenosine mechanisms
triphosphate) as an energy carrier - including natural selection
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• explains the common features of all living
things (descended from common
ancestors)
and the diversity (different populations
becoming adapted to different conditions) Evolution
predicts
trees of
relatedness
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• all forms of life today fall into one of 3 major • Evolution links all the levels of organization,
groups (Domains) from molecules to ecosystems
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• change in DNA • proteins are the molecules that determine
how organisms look and work
change in how an organism
looks or functions • proteins are assembled using information
stored in DNA
changed success at
reproduction
via an
affects the relative contribution intermediate
of that individual’s DNA to molecule called
the next generation RNA
of the population
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Taxonomy
DNA RNA Protein
=
This is known as
the Central • there are 5 – 30 million? living species
Dogma of - we need some way to organize them all
Molecular Biology
It works like this in
all organisms
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• the fundamental unit of taxonomy is the • e.g., 2 species with many similarities
species =
probably had a common ancestor
• species are clumped into larger and larger
groups (taxa) based on: placed into same taxonomic category
2+ of such taxa, with a
common ancestor, placed into a
larger taxon, and so on…
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Taxonomy Categories: species genus family
• several very similar species (that uniquely
share* a common ancestor) placed into order
one ______ (plural = ______)
class
• similar genera (with a presumed common
ancestor) placed into a ______
phylum (2 = phyla)
domain kingdom
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• all known species can be placed into one of • every species is formally referred to by its
3 domains genus and species names
Homo sapiens
Bacteria Archaea Eukarya • family (and higher) names are capitalized
and in normal font
(have simple, _______ cells) (________ cells)
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6. Ecological interactions Learning Outcomes:
• all organisms interact with their biotic and After successful completion of this section,
abiotic environment students should be able to:
• we are a species with an unusually large • draw a dated timeline of major events in the
role in many ecological systems history of the planet and life on it
• describe how the early atmosphere of the
Earth differed from today’s
• give at least one example of how life has
changed the atmosphere and geology of
Earth
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Learning Outcomes Continued: Learning Outcomes Continued:
• outline the main steps of the scientific • explain why the following parts of
method experimental design are important:
• define hypothesis, theory, null hypothesis, - controlled conditions
alternate hypothesis - large sample size
• explain why the scientific method seeks to - randomization to treatments
disprove rather than prove - blinding
• explain why the null hypothesis is central to - statistical analysis
the scientific method • explain the meaning of p values in statistical
• discuss why non-scientific forms of evidence tests
are less reliable • interpret p values and use them to make
conclusions
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Learning Outcomes Continued: Learning Outcomes Continued:
• list the features that define living things • define evolution
• define the different levels of complexity in • outline the flow of information known as the
life, from atoms to the biosphere central dogma
• define the first law of thermodynamics and
explain how it is important to living things
• define the second law of thermodynamics
and explain how living things do not break it
• name and define the two fundamental cell
types
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