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Lecture Notes 8/31-9/21

• characteristics of life
• life shows organization-cell theory
• life acquires nutrients for survival-photosynthesis/respiration
• life uses energy to maintain organization-homeostasis
• life respons to its environment-adaptation/evolution
• life needs to reproduce to maintain itself through time
• nutrients: water, minerals (Na, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Cu, Zn, etc.), vitamins, hydrocarbon molecules that are C-, H- based (carbohydrates, proteins, lipids/fats)
• methodology to learn about the natural world
1. identify a problem to study-natural curiousity
2. examine the literature to find out what is already known
3. formulate a hypothesis to test to learn new information
4. design and run an experiment to test the hypothesis
5. collect observations and measurements (data)
6. analyze and interpret your observations and measurements
7. draw a conclusion about the truthfulness of the hypothesis
   
• supernatural-religion, cannot be tested
  
• pure research-no practical applications, just "because it's there"
• applied research-business, commerical exploitation, practical use
• evolution-
• descent with modification through time (paleontology def.)
• change through time such that one species changes into one or more new species
• active form, it's still occurring but extremely slow
  
• descent through many generations
• survival of the fittest (e.g. black pague, smallpox in North Africa, etc.)
• humans have existed for only a short amount of time, as opposed to cockroaches or the bristlecone pine
• Earth is about 4.5 billion years old
• mechanism: Darwin was influenced by Malthus theory on limiting factors
1. natural populations' reproductive capacity exceeds environment's capacity to support offspring
2. environment interacts with overproduction to "select" those best adapted which "survive"
3. those best adapted to environment survive
   
• sexual reproduction provides new combinations of existing genetic material upon which the environment interacts/has survived the environment
• most mutations are harmful
  
• Origin of Species was highly controversial
• continental/genetic drift is the driving force of evolution-a slow, steady movement over millions of years resulting in climatic changes which "selects" the "best adapted"
• times of bounty and scarcity, wintertime is harder so more "selection"
  
• fossils-first/oldest evidence of life, relatively rare as conditions must be perfect
• many fossils in Montana and southwestern America
• from fossils, you can divine their behaviour, what has happened in the geological past, and support evolution
• comparitive anatomy
• homology-same structure, different function (i.e. human arm, bird wing, whale flipper, horse leg)
• scales are the origin of teeth
• new genes are never created, they already exist just as different combinations of genes; there is a tremendous variety of traits
  
• recessive alleles appear only when there are no dominant traits
• start with the phenotype, then infer the genotype (begin with recessive)
• Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is the mathematical proof of evolution

p² + 2pq + q² = 1
p + q = 1
q² = 16%
q = √.16 = .4
p + .4 = 1
p = .6
.6² + .4(.6) + .4² = 1
.36 + .48 + .16 = 1