Hydrogen Bonding and Other Bond Types

In chapter three in the course, we will discuss how cells get the energy they need in order to run every day processes. There are some differences in how animal cells do this compared to how plant cells do this. We will talk about enzymes and how they allow most of the biochemical processes of the cell to happen so quickly. There are specific ways that cells use glucose as an energy source under different circumstances, which will be covered as well. These are complex processes that you should understand as best you can. In addition, we will talk about the process of photosynthesis and how this contributes to plant cell energetics.

The focus of chapter four will be to study the ways a cell can communicate with other cells or with its environment. There are different ways that cell can do this. There are often receptors that trigger events in the cell through what’s called signal transduction. We will also talk about the cell cycle and how it is regulated. There are processes a cell goes through from the time it becomes a daughter cell until it dies that we will discuss in this chapter.

In chapter five of the course, we take a look at heredity as it applies to biological systems and organisms. On a small scale, heredity involves the process of meiosis, which is how most eukaryotic organisms pass on genetic information from one generation to the next with the ability to have genetic diversity in the subsequent generation. We will also discuss genetics in general, including Mendelian genetics first identified by Gregor Mendel in the late 1800s. There is also non-Mendelian genetics, which doesn’t follow typical Mendelian rules. There are also environmental effects on an organism’s phenotype that have nothing to do with inheritance. Finally, we will talk about chromosomal inheritance patterns, which involve larger effects on the organism because more than one or a few genes are involved in the passage of traits to the offspring.

Chapter six expands on the study of genes and genetics to involve the molecular basis of nucleic acids, including how they are used to make new copies of a cell or make proteins for the cell using process like DNA replication, transcription, and translation. These are well-understood by biologists as part of the study of molecular biology. You will also learn about the regulation of gene expression and how gene expression gets used to create specialized cells in a multicellular organism. We will talk about mutations and

how they affect an organism’s genotype and phenotype and will discuss ways biotechnology is using the study of genes and gene mutations for a variety of purposes.

In chapter seven of the course, we will talk about the biological basis of natural selection, which is the main way that the process of evolution occurs. Animal breeders and plant breeders use artificial selection in order to get what they want out of the offspring organism rather than using any natural selection process. This will lead us to talk about the principles of population genetics and how it is believed that evolution occurs over long or short stretches of time. New species are created and made extinct all the time, which we will discuss. We will also talk about how life originated on earth and how there is variation even within members of the same species.

Chapter eight studies ecology or the environment and how it relates to the populations that live in it. All organisms respond to their environment in some way and have the potential to affect it. In this chapter, we will talk about energy flow in the environment and issues related to population ecology, community ecology, and the effect of increases in density on the ecosystem. There are other disruptions of the ecosystem that are occurring all the time, which will be discussed in the chapter. Finally, we will talk about biodiversity and why it is important to the ecosystems on earth.

CHAPTER ONE: CHEMISTRY OF LIFE

This chapter introduces AP biology in an extremely basic way. Before you can understand the more complex topics you will later learn in the course, you need to know the biochemistry behind it. Water is the basic solvent of life, capable of hydrogen bonding so important to many aspects of biology in general. There are certain elements and macromolecules that are a natural part of living things. In this chapter, you will know what these are and will be able to understand biology from the perspective of the molecules involved.

THE STRUCTURE OF WATER

Water is a very simple molecule but it is so important to the study of biology. There really isn’t much water in the universe overall but on planet Earth, this just isn’t the case and water is everywhere. All biological processes depend on water to some degree. As you will learn soon, there are some unique properties of water that make it so good for the biology of this planet.

Water is found on earth in all of its physical forms. It is found frozen as ice, liquid in all of the oceans, rivers, and lakes on the planet, and gaseous as part of the gases in the atmosphere. Each phase change from one to another involves transformation of the water to a different energy state.

Figure 1 shows what the basic molecule of water looks like: