CELLS
Provide an extended response to the following essential questions:
1. How do we know how life began?
Charles Darwin was the first one to publish our modern theories of evolution : all life on Earth is related; adapting and changing over time. For example if we look at any two creatures on Earth and you can trace them back to a common ancestor. Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor from at least 7 million years ago.
But how do we know how life began?
There is no answer for this mystery yet, but abiogenesis its a big clue that scientists are working on several theories to explain it. And the first clues is amino acids, the building blocks of life. In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey demonstrated that amino acids could form naturally in the environment of the early Earth. Environments around volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean might have been the perfect places to get life started, introducing heavier metals like iron and zinc
http://www.universetoday.com/104336/how-did-life-begin/
2. How is the cell like a city?
IF we think of the nucleus like the town hall. It houses all the information and important things for the cell. The cell membrane is kind of like border patrol. The mitochondria are like the power plants; they provide ATP/energy for cellular processes. Lysosomes are basically the trash-men. They break down waste material so it doesn't build up in the cell. Vacuoles also hold water, so I guess you could think of them as water towers? Never really came up with a good analogy for that one. Vesicles are like the public transport; they get things into and out of the cells. Continuing on this mindset, just think of the rest of the organelles and apply them to random things in a city.
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_is_a_cell_like_a_city
3. How do cells communicate with one another?
Cell communication focuses on how a cell gives and receives messages with its environment and with itself. Indeed, cells do not live in isolation. Their survival depends on receiving and processing information from the outside environment, whether that information pertains to the availability of nutrients, changes in temperature, or variations in light levels. Cells can also communicate directly with one another by way of a variety of chemical and mechanical signals. In multicellular organisms, cell signaling allows for specialization of groups of cells, multiple cell types can then join together to form tissues such as muscle, blood, and brain tissue. In single-celled organisms, signaling allows populations of cells to coordinate with one another and work like a team to accomplish tasks no single cell could carry out on its own.
Cells use receptor proteins either on the outer cell wall or inside the cell itself to “hear” different signals, they provide an identification label representing cells with different types and species.
http://www.nature.com/scitable/topic/cell-communication-14122659
4. Why is stem cell research a hot topic.
Stem cells research is a growing, well-funded field, and as a result it is also a hot topic in the press. Not a week goes by without the announcement of a new and amazing advance.The pace of progress is rapid, and so what would have been trumpeted in the popular science press a decade ago is now routine, carried out in scores of laboratories worldwide.
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2003/11/stem-cells-regenerative-medicine-and-tissue-engineering.php
Provide an extended response to the following essential questions:
1. How do we know how life began?
Charles Darwin was the first one to publish our modern theories of evolution : all life on Earth is related; adapting and changing over time. For example if we look at any two creatures on Earth and you can trace them back to a common ancestor. Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor from at least 7 million years ago.
But how do we know how life began?
There is no answer for this mystery yet, but abiogenesis its a big clue that scientists are working on several theories to explain it. And the first clues is amino acids, the building blocks of life. In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey demonstrated that amino acids could form naturally in the environment of the early Earth. Environments around volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean might have been the perfect places to get life started, introducing heavier metals like iron and zinc
http://www.universetoday.com/104336/how-did-life-begin/
2. How is the cell like a city?
IF we think of the nucleus like the town hall. It houses all the information and important things for the cell. The cell membrane is kind of like border patrol. The mitochondria are like the power plants; they provide ATP/energy for cellular processes. Lysosomes are basically the trash-men. They break down waste material so it doesn't build up in the cell. Vacuoles also hold water, so I guess you could think of them as water towers? Never really came up with a good analogy for that one. Vesicles are like the public transport; they get things into and out of the cells. Continuing on this mindset, just think of the rest of the organelles and apply them to random things in a city.
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_is_a_cell_like_a_city
3. How do cells communicate with one another?
Cell communication focuses on how a cell gives and receives messages with its environment and with itself. Indeed, cells do not live in isolation. Their survival depends on receiving and processing information from the outside environment, whether that information pertains to the availability of nutrients, changes in temperature, or variations in light levels. Cells can also communicate directly with one another by way of a variety of chemical and mechanical signals. In multicellular organisms, cell signaling allows for specialization of groups of cells, multiple cell types can then join together to form tissues such as muscle, blood, and brain tissue. In single-celled organisms, signaling allows populations of cells to coordinate with one another and work like a team to accomplish tasks no single cell could carry out on its own.
Cells use receptor proteins either on the outer cell wall or inside the cell itself to “hear” different signals, they provide an identification label representing cells with different types and species.
http://www.nature.com/scitable/topic/cell-communication-14122659
4. Why is stem cell research a hot topic.
Stem cells research is a growing, well-funded field, and as a result it is also a hot topic in the press. Not a week goes by without the announcement of a new and amazing advance.The pace of progress is rapid, and so what would have been trumpeted in the popular science press a decade ago is now routine, carried out in scores of laboratories worldwide.
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2003/11/stem-cells-regenerative-medicine-and-tissue-engineering.php