BIOLOGY 201/Winter 2018 Dr.

Ian Ferguson

Lecture 1 (week 1)

Chemistry Review:

 Element: A substance that cannot be broken down into other kinds of substances by
ordinary means (nuclear fission does break them)
 Atom: Smallest unit of an element that retains that element’s properties
 Proton: Mass 1, charge +1
 Neutron: Mass 1, charge 0
 Electron: unintelligible mass, charge 0
 It’s the number of protons that determine which is the element in question
 Isotopes: Same amount of protons, different amount of neutrons in the nucleus.
Different mass, same atomic number (same element, different nuclear properties)
 Electron shells: finite number of electron layers that orbit about the nucleus
 Valence shell: outermost electron shell with a variant amount of electrons, always more
than 1
 Emergent Properties: new properties that appear in the forming of compounds. The
properties are not simply adding one element’s characteristics to the other one’s
 Uneven distribution of electrons throughout the molecule makes for a polar molecule,
in which such lack of equilibrium is due to one atom being more electronegative than
the other
 Ions: atoms or molecules with a net electrical charge
 Such a difference can be large, creating a bond caused by the attraction between
opposite charges between two elements, making an ionic bond
 Covalent Bond: Two or more atoms held together by the sharing of electrons in their
valence shells
 Enzyme: Catalyst, facilitator of chemical reactions that remains unchanged by the
reaction. Complex molecule, that facilitates the release of energy during a reaction
 There is a high energy, unstable stage in between the initial and final phases of a
reaction. Such a compound makes for the energy peak
 Acidity: Concentration of hydrogen ions
 Acid: Substance that increases amount of H+ when in water
 Base: Substance that increases the amount of OH- when in water
 Acids and bases tend to neutralize each other because the H+ and OH- tend to get
together and form water (base + acid = water + salt)
BIOLOGY 201/Winter 2018 Dr. Ian Ferguson

Lecture 2 (week 1)

Kinetic Energy:

 Molecules always have kinetic energy; they are always moving

 Temperature is just a measure of the average kinetic energy of molecules
 A solid’s molecules move more or less in the same spot; kind of like vibrating
 If heated to its melting point, the molecules of a substance get much more agitated and
move more wildly
 Diffusion: The net movement of a substance from an area of high concentration to an
area of low concentration (each molecule’s own random movement winds up creating
such a tendency so to equilibrate the environments concentration-wise)
 Osmosis: The diffusion of water across a semi-permeable membrane
 Mean speed of oxygen molecules: 460m/s (1,035km/h=Mach 1.35)
 Mean free path (average distance molecule move until they bump into another
molecule) is 60 nm (0.000000006m)
o Collision frequency: 10,000,000,000 molecule collisions per second

Four Classes of Biologically Important Macromolecules:

(1) Lipids:
 Non-polar molecules (hydrophobic – doesn’t mix with water)
 Fats
o Water molecules, polar, tend to stick to each other and ignore the non-polar
lipid
 Carry a lot of energy; high kinetic energy, agitated

(2) Carbohydrates:
 Sugar, starch, cellulose
 Relatively high in chemical energy
 Polar molecules (hydrophilic – dissolves well in water)
 Simplest carbs: monosaccharide (each molecule has a single sugar unit; ribose, glucose,
fructose, galactose)
 Disaccharide (each molecule has two sugar units; maltose, sucrose, lactose)
 Polysaccharide (two or more sugar units for each molecule, starch, cellulose, glycogen)
 Polymer: molecule made of a chain of the repeated unit
 (3) Nucleic Acids:
 DNA, RNA
 Genes, expression of genes
 Polymer: nucleotides
 Some parts are polar, some parts are non-polar, depending on which amino acids shows
up
 There are 20 kinds of amino acids

(4) Proteins:
 Enzymes, hormones, structures
 All are polymers of amino acids (valine, lysine serine, glucosamine)
 Proteins are defined by which amino acids are present and how they’re organized
 The primary structure of a protein is the sequence of amino acids
 The secondary structure of a protein is the sequence of amino acids folded in coils/folds
and held together by some bonds (shape)
 The tertiary structure is, after the first folding, another irregular folding
 None one stage replaces the other; all 3 must happen for it to be a protein (they happen
simultaneously)
 The quaternary structure is two or more protein chains aggregated to form a functional
unit (doesn’t always happen)
o Ex: hemoglobin’s integrate to create a blood cell
 The genetic material inside the cell that makes the protein is what contains the
information for the protein according to all stages

Life:

 All living things exchange things with their environment

 They all transfer energy throughout their cells: metabolism
 Reproduction
 Tries to maintain homeostasis (steady state or condition inside their body)
 Grow, develop
 Response to environment; react, change their behaviour accordingly to what’s
happening around them
o It’s not a property; it is an emergent property of a particular arrangement of
certain molecules
 Crystal: has quite a few characteristics of living things (picks up salt from water; but
doesn’t grow or metabolize)
  Virus (scientific dilemma because it’s not exactly a cell but has DNA)
 Cell is the basic, fundamental unit of all living things
o Prokaryotic cells: no true nucleus, genetic material spread in cytoplasm (almost
all are unicellular)
o Eukaryotic cells: organized, true nucleus containing genes
o Unicellular: each cell of the organism carries out all functions necessary for life
process
o Multicellular: made up of many cells, with different cells specialized to perform
different functions
 Hydrogen atom < water molecule < Celsius atom < typical protein < virus < typical
bacterium < typical animal cell < typical plant cell……
 The more volume in a cell, the more chemical reactions happening; exchanging stuff
with the environment through the surface. There is a ratio between surface and volume
of a cell, as geometrically proofed by decreasing volume and increasing surface. Cells
need to be small because the smaller an organism, the bigger the surface/volume ratio;
they require a high s/v ration to exchange materials in their environment

Different Cells (will discuss with much greater detail in future classes):

 (1) Bacteria Cell:

o No true nucleus
o No endoplasmic reticulum
o No Golgi apparatus
o No mitochondria
o No chloroplasts
 (2) Animal Cell:
o No cell wall
o No plasmodesmata
o No chloroplasts
o No central vacuole
 (3) Plant Cell:
o No centrosome
o No lysosomes
o Cell wall: cellulose
 (4) Fungal Cell:
o Eukaryotic
o Cell wall: chitin
o Pores between cells
o No plasmodesmata
 o No centrosome
o No chloroplasts
 Cytosol: complex mixture of enzymes and many other molecules in water that makes up
the “background” of a prokaryotic cell. This is where many of the chemical reactions
that make up the metabolism happen
 Cytosol is surrounded by the plasma membrane; boundary between the cell and its
environment (although, there are often parts of the cells outside the plasma membrane)
and controls the exchanges with the environment. It’s structured by two non-polar tails,
lipids, a polar head, and a phosphate. Such membrane is called a phospholipid bilayer.
The polar head will perform hydrogen bonds with water (polar) and the tendency is for
the non-polar tails to gather up; and the polar heads and polar molecules too.