Exam One Flashcards
(136 cards)
How do microbes help in agriculture?
Bacteria can help plants get Nitrogen
How do microbes help in energy?
Can take sugars from plants (cellulose and cornstarch) to make ethanol - biofuels
How do microbes help in food production?
Preservatives keep pH low and environment unfriendly for microbes
How many cells are there on earth?
25E29cells
Where are the majority of microbes?
On marine surfaces (66%)
How old is planet Earth?
around 4.5 billion years old
When was the origin of cellular life?
around 3.5-3.8 billion years ago
What was early earth like?
Anoxic (mostly CO2), much hotter than the present earth.
How were the first biological molecules likely made?
They were likely made in mounds of montmorillonite clay associated with hydrothermal springs that have the ability to precipitate so molecules can grow
What is the evidence for RNA as the first genome?
RNA can bind small molecules (ATP, nucleotides, amino acids), and catalytic RNA has enzymatic activity
What was the primitive metabolism of early life?
Anaerobic, autotrophic, and chemolithotrophic
When was the first evidence for microbial life found? Where?
around 3.5 billion years ago in stromatolites
When did oxygenic phototrophic cyanobacteria appear?
around 2.8 billion years ago
How did earth shift from an anoxic to an oxic environment?
oxygenic phototrophic bacteria appeared, iron was oxidized, oxygen accumulated, an ozone layer formed
What do all prokaryotic cells contain?
Cell wall, cytoplasmic membrane, nucleic, cytoplasm, plasmid (in some bacteria), and ribosome
What do all eukaryotic cells contain?
Cytoplasmic membrane, ER, ribosomes, nucleus, nucleolus, nuclear membrane, Golgi, cytoplasm
Theory of endosymbiosis
Mitochondria and chloroplasts came from chemoorganotroph and cyanobacterium
Supportive evidence for the theory of endosymbiosis
Mito and Chloroplasts: have their own genomes, contain their own ribosomes (70S), antibiotics are effective, rRNA sequences are similar to prokaryotic rRNA
How long have prokaryotic cells been on earth
about 4.3 billion years
How does the Hydrogen hypothesis explain how the first eukaryotic cell was formed?
Archaea cell engulfed a bacterial cell that produced hydrogen. Kept it alive to make hydrogen for the archaea cell because hydrogen is an electron donor
When did the early photosynthetic eukaryotic cell come?
1.5 billion years ago
What gene is sequenced in bacteria and archaea to measure phylogeny?
16S
What gene is sequenced in eukarya to help phylogeny
18S
What are the steps in SSU RNA sequencing?
Isolate DNA
Amplify gene by PCR
Run on agarose gel
sequence