2. Consider the different evolutionary influences on behavior between heterotrophic and autotrophic organisms.
3. Consider the following animal phyla: Annelida, Arthropoda, Chordata, Cnidaria, Echindermata, Mollusca, Nematoda, Platyhelminthes.
6. Identify 10 non-vertebrate animals which present serious problems to human health. Which phyla do these belong to?
7. What are the major Vertebrate Classes? Which Vertebrate Class includes humans? Roughly, how old is our species (human) thought be based on the paleontological record?
8. The first vertebrates were presumed to be aquatic. Terrestrialization led to what physiological adaptations? (Come up with 5.)
9. Define homeostasis. Come up with 5 different examples of homeostatic processes in vertebrate animals.
10. In animals, what are working definitions for "tissue", "organ", and "organ system"? Why is skin considered an "organ system"?
11. What are the FOUR basic tissue types? List several specific examples of each.
12. List all of the major atomic, mineral and molecular components that make up your cells and body. Where / what do these derive from?
13. Some amino acids are referred to as "essential amino acids". Which ones and why? If some amino acids are considered "essential", are the others considered "non-essential"? What exactly is non-essential about "non-essential" amino acids?
14. Many vitamins are considered "co-enzymes". What is a co-enzyme? What is vitamin A and how is it used in your body? Give an example how Fe (iron) is used in your body. List 5 important roles of Calcium in your body.
15. Is the lumen of your stomach considered "inside" or "outside" your body? Why?
16. Identify the major parts of your digestive system, mouth to anus. List the most important processes that occur in each anatomical unit.
17. You are eating a potato; a potato consists heavily of starch. What are the steps in getting the starch into your blood. Consider mouth, stomach, and small intestine.
18. You are eating a hamburger, consisting heavily of protein. What tissue does most of the protein derive from? What are the steps in getting the starch into your blood. Again, consider mouth, stomach and small intestine.
19. You put a large amount of butter on your potato; butter consists heavily of fat. What is the form of the fat in the butter. What are the steps in getting the fat into your blood. Consider mouth, stomach, small intestine and lymph system.
20. What is the role of the liver in digestion? What other functions does liver serve (list 5)?
21. What is the role of the pancreas in digestion?
22. What is a zymogen? Give an example.
23. Gastrin, Secretin, CCK and Enterogastrone are all hormones with important roles in digestion. For each hormone, identify the signal that stimulates release (1) and identify the action of the hormone (2).
24. How is glucose transported across the intestinal epithelium? What are the specific molecular steps?
25. For fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids, what are the final breakdown (digested) products prior to uptake? Why are these molecules not broken down further before uptake?
26. The epithelium of the small intestine is organized in "villi", the lumen-facing membranes of the epithelial cells themselves are organized in "microvilli". What are these structures and what do they confer to the intestine?
27. What is the difference between an "open" and "closed" circulatory system? In what animals would you expect to find each? What is the fundamental purpose of a heart?
28. Be familiar with the anatomy of the mammalian circulatory system, including the chambers and chief valves of the heart, the pulmonary system and the blood vessel system (arteries, arterioles, capillaries, veinules and veins). Draw and label. Trace the movement of a blood cell through the circulatory system from Right Ventricle to Right Atrium.
29. Arteries and arterioles carry blood [from or to] the heart while veinules and veins carry blood [from or to] the heart.
30. What is the major contribution to blood pressure? What are the relative blood pressures in arteries, capillaries and veins? What is the mechanism driving blood through veins?
31. Individual heart muscle cells are self-contractile and self-excited. Describe the roles of each of the following in coordinating heart contractions:
33. Why is it critical that atria and ventricles NOT contract at the same time? What would happen to blood flow through the heart if they did?
34. How is blood flow regulated through capillary beds? In general, what percentage of all capillaries are open to blood flow at any given moment?
35. What is the major way nutrients and fluid transfer from capillaries to tissue? What force drives this movement? What are the 2 routes for fluid to return to the circulatory system? Describe the relative hydrostatic pressures across a capillary bed (i.e. relative blood pressure to "tissue pressure" at the arteriole end vs. the veinule end).
36. What is the major mechanism for stabilizing (i.e. buffering) pH of the circulatory system (and body in general). How does the production of CO2 in tissue affect local pH in blood? How does the removal of CO2 in the lungs affect local pH in the blood?
37. How is O2 transported through the body? What is hemoglobin? What is myoglobin? What blood cell type contains hemoglobin? What is the structure of hemoglobin? What makes blood red (the answer is oxidized iron - like rust - but how is this the answer)? What is the contribution of hemoglobin to sickle cell anemia?
38. How does pH influence O2-hemoglobin interactions? How does CO2 production in tissue influence O2-hemoglobin interactions? How does CO2 removal in lungs influence O2-hemoglobin interactions? (i.e. if O2 binds to hemoglobin in the lungs, what makes it unbind in the tissue?).
39. Maximization of surface area is important in many biological situations. Give examples in digestion, circulation and respiration.
THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS WERE ADDED IN 1997 AND MAY SEEM TO BE REPEATS OF PRECEEDING QUESTIONS. NEVERTHELESS, YOU WILL BE ASSUMED TO BE FAMILIAR WITH THEM.
40. O2 binding to hemoglobin is saturable. How many O2 molecules can bind to one hemoglobin molecule? Explain why there is a limit (i.e. saturation).
41. Why do ALL organisms have excretion mechanisms? Understand (i.e. answer) this question in the context of water balance, toxic compounds and metabolic byproducts.
42. What are the THREE nitrogenous end products of amino acid metabolism? What is the most common form, for ALL animals? Correlate the form of nitrogenous "waste" with life-history of the organism (i.e., aquatic, terrestrial, etc.). Why is ammonia/ammonium a problem (i.e. toxic) for the animal to retain?
43. Identify the three basic processes involved in excretion for essentially ALL multicellular animals (i.e. flat worms onward). In other words, and in a general sense, how is the excretion initially formed and how is it modified?
44. Identify the "parts" of the mammalian excretory system. Be familiar with the following: renal artery, renal vein, kidney, ureter, bladder, urethra, renal cortex, renal medulla, renal pelvis, nephron, glomerulus, Bowman's capsule, podocytes, proximal tubule, distal tubule, loop of Henle, descending limb, ascending limb, collecting duct.
45. Which parts are involved in filtration? Which parts important for secretion and reabsorption? Where is the majority of H2O recovered?
46. What is the molecular mechanism for "active reabsorption"? What is the molecular mechanism for H2O recovery?
47. Which animals are able to concentrate urine above the bodies osmolarity? How is this accomplished? What is the osmolarity of most body fluid (blood and interstitial)? What are the interstitial osmolarities in the kidney in cortex and in the "lower" medula? How are these different kidney osmolarities established and maintained?
48. Compare the daily volume of fluid the kidneys filter with the daily volume of urine the kidneys produce. What percentage of H2O is recovered from the initial filtrate?
49. Urine is sterile in a human with healthy kidneys. Explain. What does "sterile" mean? How does the kidney sterilize urine?
51. For simplicity, your book organizes your bodies defense mechanisms as "three lines of defense". Be familiar with each "line" and the function of each "line".
52. Defense lines one and two are referred to as "non-specific" while line three is referred to as "specific"; what mechanism or process is being referred to as specific or non-specific? How are "natural killer cells" and "cytotoxic T cells" similar; how are they fundamentally different?
53. Cells involved in the immune response are white blood cells. What are the different kinds? Where are they made?
54. The "third line of defense" includes several kinds of B-cells, T-cells, macrophages, etc. organized in (1) humoral immune response and (2) cell-mediated immune response. These two responses relate to (1) humoral response: stimulus can be a small "free" molecule (antigen) floating around in the blood vs. (2) cell-mediated response: stimulus can ONLY be a "foreign" molecule (antigen) attached to the membrane of another cell (antigen presenting cell). B-cells are part of the humoral response pathway, capable of responding to "free" antigens. T-cells are part of the cell-mediated pathway, capable ONLY of responding to antigen presenting cells.
55. T-cells have evolved to respond to our own cells when they have either: (1) become infected by some virus, or (2) become "strangers" (i.e. loose the molecular identity signaling relation to self).
56. Regarding the humoral immune response pathway, be familiar with the following: antigen, antibody, immunoglobulin, clonal selection, B-cell, plasma antigen producing cells, memory B-cells.
57. What is the basic structure of IgG antibody? What are the ways in which an IgG antibody can inactivate antigens?
58. Regarding the cell-mediated immune response pathway, be familiar with the following: antigen, macrophage, antigen presenting cell, helper T-cell (Th-cell), cytotoxic T-cell (Tc-cell), Memory Tc-cells, Memory Th-cells.
59. Specificity of the "third line of defense" involves receptors. B-cell receptors are proteins, and therefore gene products, with nearly identical structure to the IgG molecules that B-cell progeny will later secrete. Following activation by a specific antigen and subsequent clonal selection, B-cell progeny produce free IgG antibodies with nearly the same structure as their receptors. There are more than 1,000,000 different B-cell receptors, recognizing an equivalent number of different potential antigens. However, there are only about 100,000 different genes in us. How then, is such diversity of B-cell receptor generated?
60. T-cells also have receptors, like B-cells and with similar diversity. A difference between B-cells and T-cells is that B-cell progeny produce "free" antibodies while activated T-cells either produce hormones (interleukins) which activate other responses or produce cytotoxic progeny which kill antigen presenting cells. T-cells do not produce "free" antibodies.
61. HIV kills indirectly, by weakening the immune system (acquired immune deficiency). How does it weaken the immune system? What part of the immune pathway does the AIDS virus target?
62. What is MHC? How is MHC involved in identifying self? If humans have 20 MHC genes and there are 100 different alleles for each gene, how many different human identities are possible?
63. What is "complement"? Where does it come from? How does it act?
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