Concepts Beginning (preschool - 7 years)

Organisms , Behavior, Diversity, Adaptation, and Survival

1. Orgainsm is a living object.
2. Plants and animals are the same and different.
3. Organisms need food, water, and shelter to survive.
4. The behavior of individual organisms is influenced by internal cues (such as hunger) and external cues (such as changes in the environment).
5. Plants and animals have features that help them survive in different environments.
6. Stories sometimes give plants and animals properties they do not have.
7. Humans and other organisms have senses that help them detect internal and external cues.
8. Each plant and animal have different structures that serve different functions in growth, survival, and reproduction (humans have distinct body structures for walking, holding, seeing, and talking)
9. Different plants and animals have structures that help them live in different places.
10. Some kinds of organisms, that once lived on Earth, have completely disappeared (are extinct).

Reproduction and Life Cycles

1. Plants and animals reproduce plants and animals similar to their parents.
2. Plants and animals have life cycles that include being born, developing into adults, reproducing, and eventually dying.
3. Plants and animals closely resemble their parents but not exactly.
4. There are differences among individual organisms of a species.

Microorganisms and disease

1. Plants, and animals (people are animals) get infections from other organisms (germs).

 

Educator notes

Concepts Intermediate (7 years - 11 years)

Organisms , Behavior, Diversity, Adaptation, and Survival

1. Organism is the material structure of an individual life form. E.g. an individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.
2. All living organisms have basic needs, (animals need air, water, food, and shelter; plants need air, water, nutrients, light, and shelter).
3. All organisms have similar needs and structures.
4. All living organisms
   • Use (metabolize) food for energy - to move,
   • Grow, (require nutrition)
   • Use oxygen (respire),
   • Use water,
   • Reproduce, (Species must reproduce to survive.)
   • Respond to the environment (sensitivity),
   • Grow, (Plants and animals may change in appearance a little or a lot as they grow.)
   • Excrete waste
5. All organisms must have their basic needs met to survive.
   • Organisms must have optimum ranges of food, light, heat, water, and shelter met to survive.
   • Organisms can survive only in environments in which their needs can be met.
6. Organisms can be organizations of cells.
7. Important levels of organization for structure and function include cells, organs, tissues, organ systems, and organisms.
8. Groups of specialized cells cooperate to form a tissue, such as a muscle.
9. Different tissues are grouped together to form larger functional units, called organs.
10. Each type of cell, tissue, and organ has a distinct structure and set of functions that serve the organism as a whole.
11. Systems interact with one another.
12. The human organism has systems for digestion, respiration, reproduction, circulation, excretion, movement, control and coordination, and for protection from disease.
13. Similarities among organisms internal features infer a degree of relatedness among them.
14. Living organisms can be sorted (classified) into groups in many ways by their common properties. (Smallest group is species.)
    • Properties used for grouping depends on the purpose of grouping.
    • Internal and external features are used to classify organisms.
    • All species are similar and different.
15. Adaptation is a change in a species or individual that improves its condition or relationship to the environment.
16. Some organisms that lived long ago are similar to organisms that live today while others are different.
17. Some individual differences provide better opportunities for surviving and reproducing.
18. Extinction means there are no living organisms of a certain species.
19. Adaptation is a change in a species or individual that improves its condition or relationship to the environment.
20. Animals migrate to adapt to environmental seasonal change. Hoofed animals (bighorn sheep, moose) learn migratory behaviors from their herd members while migrating.

Reproduction, Life Cycles, and Heredity

1. Cells continually divide to make more cells for growth and repair.
2. Each different organism has a life cycle that is different from other organisms
3. In many species, including humans, females produce eggs and males produce sperm.
4. Plants also reproduce sexually, the egg and sperm are produced in the flowers of flowering plants. Properties of flowering plants include: flower shape, color, nectar, & scent.
5. An egg and sperm unite (fertilization) to begin development of a new individual.
6. That new individual receives genetic information from its mother (via the egg) and its father (via the sperm).
7. Sexually produced offspring are never identical to either of their parents.
8. Many characteristics of an organism are inherited from the parents of the organism, but other characteristics result from an individual's interactions with the environment.
9. Inherited characteristics include the color of flowers and the number of limbs of an animal.
10. Other features, such as the ability to ride a bicycle, are learned through interactions with the environment and cannot be passes on to the next generation. This infers a way to transfer genetic information from one generation to another.
11. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells of a multicellular organism which are capable of making indefinitely more cells of the same type, and from which certain other kinds of cells can arise by differentiation.

Clone

1. A clone is in many ways like identical twins. They have the same DNA, they may look the same but they have unique experiences and memories. They are two different people.

Microorganisms and disease Concepts

1. Microorganisms can cause disease.
2. Most microorganisms do not cause disease and many are beneficial.
3. Disease is a breakdown in structures or functions of an organism.
4. Disease is essential to decompose organism.
5. Decomposition is a way to recycle materials.

 

Educator notes

Stem cell engineering

Concepts Literate (11+)

Organisms , Behavior, Diversity, Adaptation, and Survival

Living organisms are self-sustaining chemical systems (living forms) capable of Darwinian evolution. Key properties include: a chemical system, grow, reproduce, and provide energy (metabolism) for life through their genetic and molecular components through Darwinian evolution (system with genetic inheritance of DNA).

The basic structure that allows this is the cell. Cells grow, reproduce (or prolifereate), send information (signals), sense information (signals), move, change shape, stick to other surfaces (adhere), differentiate, and die. Learning about cells and how they function will improve the decisions we make for healthy living.

1. Organisms have been classifed into six kingdoms: Archaebacteria, Eubacteria, Protist, Fungi, Plant, and Animal. Teacher notes for analysis of living or different life forms.
2. Organism may also be grouped as viral and nonviral life. With nonviral organisms classified into three or four groups of organisms or life forms:
   1. Eukaryote a cellular organism (one or more cells) with DNA in the form of chromosomes within a distinct nucleus (protists, plants, algae, fungi, & animals)
   2. Bacteria, and
   3. Archaea. Prokaryotes include bacteria, cyanobacteria, and archaea (archaebacteria). Prokaryotes have no nuclear membrane, no organelles in the cytoplasm except ribosomes, and has its genetic material in the form of single strand of coils or loops.
   4. Lokiarchaeota appears between archaean and ekaryotes.
3. Phages are viruses that infect bacteria.
• Phages are bacterial viruses. Phages can be used as an antimicrobial remedy to attack noncommunicable diseases (NCD). Their ability to target specific bacteria and minimize damage to surrounding bacteria is a plus. However, a negative can be antiphage resistance and discovering phages to use to target specific bacteria.
  
4. Living systems and ecosystems at all levels of organization demonstrate the complementary nature of structure and function.
5. Animals consume energy and plants use sunlight to make their food.
6. Some organisms can not be easily classified as only a plant or animal.
7. All organisms are composed of cells, the fundamental unit of life.
8. Most organisms are single cells; other organisms, including humans, are multicellular.
9. Cells carry on the many functions needed to sustain life.
10. Two-thirds of a cell is water.
11. Cells take in nutrients to provide energy for the work that cells do and to make the materials that a cell or an organism needs.
12. Specialized cells perform specialized functions in multicellular organisms.
13. An organism's behavior evolves through adaptation to its environment.
14. Species is a group of living organisms with agreed on similarities or common attributes (or properties) designated by a common name. The most notable property is being able to exchange genes or interbreed.
    • Species is a taxonomic unit, below genus. e.g. Homo sapiens.
    • Species must reproduce to survive.
    • Species includes all organisms that can mate with one another to produce sexually fertile offspring.
15. Millions of species of animals, plants, and microorganisms are alive today. Although different species might look different, the internal structures among organisms is similar, their chemical processes, and common ancestry. Biological evolution explains how the diversity of life and the uniqueness of each species' properties developed through a slow processes over many generations through biological adaptation, which involves the selection of naturally occurring variations in populations, which include changes in structures, behaviors, or physiology that enhance survival and reproduction success in a particular environment.
16. How a species moves, obtains food, reproduces, and responds to danger are based in the species' evolutionary history.
17. Most mammal species are male dominant. Exceptions include: ruffed and ring-tailed lemurs, spotted hyenas, killer whales, African lions, bonobos, and two types of elephants. The Lion King should be the Lion Queen and female lions rule.
18. Small differences can accumulate in successive generations so that descendants are very different from their ancestors. Individual organisms with certain traits are more likely to survive and reproduce. Changes in environment can affect the survival of individuals and entire species.
19. Extinction of a species occurs when the environment changes and the adaptive characteristics of a species are insufficient to allow its survival.
    Fossils indicate that many organisms that lived long ago are extinct. Extinction of species is common; most of the species that have lived on the earth no longer exist.
20. Organic means related to living or from derived from living matter. Organic compounds always have carbon (most inorganic compounds do not have carbon) and hydrogen or C-H bonds. Having carbon is not sufficient for a compound to be organic. Look for carbon and hydrogen. Examples: Sugar or sucrose (C12H22O11), benzene (C6H6), methane (CH4), ethanol or grain alcohol (C2H6O). See chemistry

Reproduction, Life Cycle, and Heredity

1. A species includes all organisms that can mate with one another to produce sexually fertile offspring.
2. Organisms are collections of cells.
3. Cells grow and divide - thereby producing more cells.
4. Reproduction is a characteristic of all living systems.
5. No individual organism lives forever. Therefore, reproduction is essential to the continuation of every species.
6. Some organisms reproduce asexually and other organisms reproduce sexually.
7. Genetic characteristics are passed from only one parent (asexual) or two parents (sexual) reproduction.
8. Every organism requires a set of instructions for specifying its traits.
9. Heredity is the passage of these instruction from one generation to another.
10. Heredity information is contained in genes, located in the chromosomes of each cell.
11. Each gene carries a single unit of information.
12. An inherited trait of an individual can be determined by one or by many genes, and a signal gene can influence more than one trait.
13. A human cell contains many thousands of different genes.
14. New varieties of plants and animals have been cultivated through selective breeding and gene splicing.
15. While genes are important parts of DNA, they are not the whole picture. DNA includes about 95% extragenic material that also plays a regulatory role in gene expression. THis does not decrease the importance of genes, but increases it with a need to understand gene regulation and epigenetic factors in the role of growth and reproduction.

Microorganisms and disease

1. Most microorganisms do not cause disease and many are beneficial.
2. Disease is a breakdown in structures or functions of an organism.
3. Some diseases are the result of intrinsic failures of the system.
4. Others are the result of damage by infection of other organisms.
5. Disease contagion variables
   • Type of organism
   • Method of infection
   • Organism's life cycle
   • Surveillane of health conditions
   • Number of cases in first wave of infection
   • Time between generations
   • Types of organisms infected of harbor disease
   • Detection ease, Time to confirm infection, availability of testing, ease of testing, similarity to other organisms and diseases, new disease or known disease
   • Availability of antibodies
   • Mortality rate
   • Percentage of fatal cases
   • Sanitary conditions, deforestation, urbaniztion, agriculture density, native species, availability of potable water
   • Availability of heath services. Medical clinics. Doctors, hospitals, health care,
   • Communication
   • Political, local, organization and trust of information, networking, leadership, and communication

Educator notes

• Vaccination data sheet
• Evolution teacher's guide at Project 2061
• Bird flu tree. Avian influenza virus (AIV) and H5N8.

Life - living, organisms,

What is living?

Analysis of different life forms:

Archaea. Prokaryotes include bacteria, cyanobacteria, and archaea (archaebacteria). Prokaryotes have no nuclear membrane, no organelles in the cytoplasm except ribosomes, and has its genetic material in the form of single strand of coils or loops.

• Examples - microbes in your gut, extremiphiles living in deep sea vents
• Madke of - a single, simple cell with no nucleus or membrane bound organelles
• Can evolve
• Grows and responds to stimuli and mantains a metbolism
• Reproduces - asexually splitting or budding into new organisms
• Alive? - Yes

Bacteria

• Examples - E. coli, salmonella
• Made of - A simple cell without a nucleus,like archaea, but with different cell walls.
• Can evolve
• Grows and responds to stimuli and mantains a metbolism
• Reproduces - Asexually splitting like archaea, or exchanging and recombining genetic information with other bacteria in a process called conjugation
• Alive? - Yes

Eukaryote a cellular organism (one or more cells) with DNA in the form of chromosomes within a distinct nucleus (protists, plants, algae, fungi, & animals)

• Examples - Plants, animals, fungi, and most multicellulare organisms
• Made of - A complex cell or cells
• Can evolve - ask Darwin
• Grows and responds to stimuli and mantains a metbolism
• Reproduces - Sexually or asexually recombining genetic information material into new iterations through mitosis or meiosis.
• Alive? - Yes

Viruses

• Examples - SARS-CoV-2, influenza, herpes,
• Made of - a tangle of genetic material in a protein shell
• Can evolve - Yes when errors aremade in the process of copying itself, the errors that help it spread and have moreopportunities to continue to exist
• It does not grow and respond to stimuli and mantain a metbolism
• Reproduces - by hijacking a cell's molecular machinery and making copies of itself.
• Alive? - Most biologist say no.

Prions

• Examples - proteins that cause mad cow disease, Crreutzfeldt-Jakob disease
• Made of misfolded proteins
• Does not evolve, but new forms can be made and then copy themselves
• Does not grow and respond to stimuli and mantain a metbolism
• Reproduces like dominos as one protein misfolds, then the others around it will too. It's chemistry.
• Alive? - No

Be careful when considering what organisms can survive:

Research the immortal jellyfish and tardigrade:

Tardigrades can survive crushing pressure of the ocean floor, DNA shredding radiation, the vacuu of space and eventemperatures just 1 degree above absolute zero, and hte evaporation of all the water in their cells. Don't believe it.

Research ... American Scientist article - Tardigrades

 

What about the Immortal Jellyfish?

Concepts Beginning (preschool - 7 years)

Heredity

1. Living organisms (plants & animals) look like their parents. Babies look like their parents, seeds grow into plants like the plant that grew the seeds.
2. Modern organisms may resemble extinct organisms.
3. Objects and organisms can be changed to function for better or worse.

Evolution

1. Evolution is driven by reproductive multiplication, variation by mutation, and recombination, adaptation with selection, proliferations of healthy functioning descendants.
2. See also evolution & equilibrium in process concepts

Educator notes

• The mechanics of evolution are responsible for every single creature that lives on the face of the Earth and ever has or will live.

Concepts Intermediate (7 years - 11 years)

Heredity

Evolution

1. Changes may not be noticed on a scale of a human's life time.
2. However, these changes become large as the number of lifetimes become large.
3. See also evolution & equilibrium in process concepts

Educator notes

• The mechanics of evolution are responsible for every single creature that lives on the face of the Earth and ever has or will live. See evolution teacher's guide
• Newsweek October 25, 2004. p 66. President Bush's Council on Bioethics objected to - "computer-brain hookups that would enable us to download the Oxford English Dictionary."

Concepts Literate (11+)

Heredity

Evolution

1. Present conditions such as the salt in the oceans, continental drift, erosion of land forms, changes in organisms... can be explained as gradual and sporadic.
2. Evolution is the idea of the present arising from materials and forms of the past.
3. Sometimes a series of changes occurs so slowly or so rapidly that it is difficult to document the evolution. See evalution teachers guide
4. In evolving systems, change can be gradual, steady, repetitive, irregular, or in more than one way at the same time. For example: whales blow holes moved from the snout to the top of the head in 3 million years. Polar bears developed the ability to survive on a high fat diet of seal blubber in 300 000 years. Chinook salmon body size decreased in response to commercial fishing in 90 years. Mosquitoes colonized London's Underground in 1863 and now can not mate with their above-ground relatives. Green anole lizards at Indian River Lagoon, Florida adapted to the invasion of brown anoles with larger toepads and more scalesto climb higher and cling better to branches in 15 years. Tawny owls come in two colors: light gray and reddish brown. As the climate becomes milder with less snow there has been a steady increase in the proportion of red brown owls. Discover Magazine. Life in the Fast Lane by Jane Braxton Little. March 2015.
5. Human design suggests current features of the human body are designs that have been handed down, or evolved, to create human properties for characteristics that could have been designed better. Features like an appendix, tender naked skin prone to cuts, bruises, bites, and sunburn, back or spinal column that is efficient for four legged creatures than two or bipedal creatures, pertuberances above the nostrils, weak teeth that are prone to tooth decay, slow runners, weak animals ( chimps are three times as strong humans even thought they are smaller than us), a brain that stacks brain parts from a brain stem, to a hind brain (respiration, balance, alertness - .5 billion years old from dinosaurs), mid brain (visual, auditory, reflexes and controls eye movement), and fore brain (language, culture, and decision making). ... However, humans are able to detect a single photon in the dark and are able to hear sound a sound wave that is less than the diameter of hydrogen atom, and hemoglobin is able to adapt to differen air pressures.
6. See also evolution & equilibrium in process concepts

Educator notes

1. Evolutionary theory is the best scientific explanation for the unity and diversity of life. Miller & Levine
2. The mechanics of evolution are responsible for every single creature that lives on the face of the Earth and ever has or will live.
3. RNA. There are many kinds of RNA:
• mRNA (messenger RNA) this molecule transfers DNA's code out of a cell's nucleus to guide protein construction.
• Transfer RNA delivers amino acids to the ribosome.
• Other RNA's silence genes or affect their activity.
4. NOTCH gene family controls the timing of development in everyting from fruit flies to whales. In human brain evolution NOTCH2 and NOTCH2NL are thought to have an important role in brain development.
5. CRISPR-Cas9 system has two molecules used to change (mutate?) DNA. 1. an enzyme, Cas9, which acts as molecular scissors to cut two strands of DNA in a genome so DNA can be added or removed. 2. a piece of RNA (gRNA) to guide the Cas9 to the right part of the genome so it cuts at the right place of the genome.
6. CRISPEY (Cas9) is a retron derived base editor, which has been used to change genomes of single cell organisms. It is a highly efficient and precise system to edit parallel genomes to measure the fitness effects of thousands of natural genetic variants in yeast. However, it may have the potential to alter genomes of multicell organisms. It takes retrons, whose RNA matches yeast genes with a mutated base. Combines them with CRISPR's RNA, which guides it to the targeted DNA. The Cas9 enzyme acts as CRISPR's scissors and cuts the DNA. Then the cells's DNA replaces the yeast gene with DNA made by the retron's reverse transcriptase.
7. Newsweek July 31, 2006 - Jonathan Alter. July 19, 2006 - President Bush casts his first VETO on a bill that would allow surplus embryos from fertility clinics to be used for pathbreaking research instead of being tossed out in the garbage. If using embryos for medical research is "murder" (Bush's position), then how can he support the existence of fertility clinics?
8. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is common between species of bacteria, bacteria and plants, and sometimes insects and plants. Such as in the sap sucking whitefly. Millions of years ago, the gene, BtPMaT1, which plants use to detoxify a poison (phenolic glycoside) they make as a defense mechanism was transferred from plants to the fly. When the fly acquired the gene, it became possible for it to feed on hundreds of plants without harm. Making it a significant pest for agriculture.
9. See evolution teacher's guide