Chapter 1 Flashcards
(47 cards)
One of two prokaryotic domains, the other being Bacteria.
Archaea
One of two prokaryotic domains, the other being Archaea.
Bacteria
The use of computers, software, and mathematical models to process and integrate biological information from large data sets.
bioinformatics
The scientific study of life.
Biology
The entire portion of Earth inhabited by life; the sum of all the planet’s ecosystems.
Biosphere
Life’s fundamental unit of structure and function; the smallest unit of organization that can perform all activities required for life.
Cell
A directional change in temperature, precipitation, or other aspect of the global climate that lasts for three decades or more.
Climate change
All the organisms that inhabit a particular area; an assemblage of populations of different species living close enough together for potential interaction.
Community
An organism that feeds on producers, other consumers, or nonliving organic material.
Consumer
In a controlled experiment, a set of subjects that lacks (or does not receive) the specific factor being tested. Ideally.
Control group
An experiment designed to compare an experimental group with a control group; ideally, the two groups differ only in the factor being tested.
Controlled experiment
Recorded observations.
Data
A type of logic in which specific results are predicted from a general premise.
Deductive reasoning
A nucleic acid molecule, usually a double-stranded helix, in which each polynucleotide strand consists of nucleotide monomers with a deoxyribose sugar and the nitrogenous bases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T); capable of being replicated and determining the inherited structure of a cell’s proteins.
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
All the organisms in a given area as well as the abiotic factors with which they interact; one or more communities and the physical environment around them.
Ecosystem
New properties that arise with each step upward in the hierarchy of life, owing to the arrangement and interactions of parts as complexity increases.
Emergent properties
The domain that includes all eukaryotic organisms.
Eukarya
A type of cell with a membrane-enclosed nucleus and membrane-enclosed organelles.
Eukaryotic cell
Descent with modification; the idea that living species are descendants of ancestral species that were different from the present-day ones; also defined more narrowly as the change in the genetic composition of a population from generation to generation.
Evolution
A scientific test. Often carried out under controlled conditions that involve manipulating one factor in a system in order to see the effects of changing that factor.
Experiment
A set of subjects that has (or receives) the specific factor being tested in a controlled experiment. Ideally, the experimental group should be identical to the control group for all other factors.
Experimental group
The regulation of a process by its output or end product.
Feedback regulation
A discrete unit of hereditary information consisting of a specific nucleotide sequence in DNA (or RNA, in some viruses).
Gene
The process by which information encoded in DNA directs the synthesis of proteins or, in some cases, RNAs that are not translated into proteins and instead function as RNAs.
Gene expression
