what is life

Question 1

How do scientists ‘know’ and mediate uncertainty about what they know?

Answer 1

They take have many trials. do lots of tests
make a lot of observations
P values and statistical analysis
always some level of uncertainty
scientists need to be open to limitations

Question 2

Contrast observations with categorisations

Answer 2

observations use our range of senses, done without prior knowledge or assumptions
categorization is using what we observe to put things in “boxes” and fill in the blanks from our observations by making assumptions

Question 3

What are the principal determinants, for the textbook definition, if something is
alive?

Answer 3

has Dna, Rna
evolves
can reproduce

Question 4

Compare bacteria with viruses. Substantiate whether members of these categories
are alive

Answer 4

They both have RNA but viruses cannot reproduce on their own. they require a host.
Bacteria can reproduce on their own.
they both evolve
Bacteria are def alive
viruses can be debated

Question 5

What are the main (taxonomic) categories for living organisms? How are
organisms placed into these categories?

Answer 5

domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species

They use phylogenetic trees, dichotomous keys, cladograms

Question 6

What are the 6 kingdomes

Answer 6

animalia, fungi, eubacteria, plantae, protista, archaebacteria

Question 7

What is bias? How has human bias been exhibited in the categorization of living
things?

Answer 7

Bias is placing more importance on something that has no reason to be more important
Humans place more importance on themselves and alike things.
ex.know less abt bact than animals. even less abt archeabact

Question 8

What are other tools used to categorise and identify living things?

Answer 8

Cladograms goes upwards, keeps the branches in line with each other

Phylogenies – has a branch that things split off from, showing how they would have split back in time.

Question 9

describe protista

Answer 9

euk, 1500 species, mostly unicell
ex slime moulds

Question 10

describe plantae

amt of specs, euk or prot?, how do they get energy, example, cell amt

Answer 10

multicell
ex corpse flower
400 000 spec
autotrophic
euks

Question 11

describe fungi

Answer 11

multi cell
euk
heterotrophs
300 000 specs

Question 12

describe anamalia

Answer 12

probably 8.7 mill spec
in reality 1.2 million specs
humans are animals therefore we are biased towards animals
euk

Question 13

eubacteria vs archeabacteria

Answer 13

eubact - some pathenogenic (staphylococcus aures) but also some good ex probiotics (good ecoli). prokaryotes
archeabact - extremophiles, rRNA and memb composition is diff from euk and bact

Question 14

explain the wolf and mouse analogy

Answer 14

All about perspectives
Mouse’s home range is limited
Wolf: its home range is just a small amount of the mouses
Humans, were limited by perspective and theres certain ways of looking at thighs
Wolf relative to mouse perceives a larger environment
Takeaway is that the sizeable difference between the twos perspectives
Build off different perspectives to look at the bigger picture and understand the whole system in a better way