Section 1: Science and Evolution
- Students should be able to design and analyze various experimental
scenarios, identify hypotheses being tested as well as positive
and negative controls used. In
this context, students should be able to distinguish between
questions that can and those that cannot be answered scientifically.
- Students
should be able to present the basic theories underlying modern
biology, namely the physiochemical nature of life, the cell theory
of life, and the theory of evolution. They should be able
to analyze various scenarios in terms of how these theories apply
and how they support one another.
- Students should be develop and
analyze various evolutionary scenarios in terms of natural selection,
sexual selection and random processes (e.g. genetic drift) in
terms of possible outcomes.
- Students should be able
to describe the difference between homologous and analogous structures,
and how these concepts come into play in the construction of
phylogenic scenarios.
Section 2: Water, Membranes and Energetics
- Students should be able to analyze various biologically important
molecules in terms of interactions with water, with the goal
of predicting the types of molecular, macromolecular and cellular
structures they will form.
- Students should be able to distinguish
between steady state and equilibrium systems and describe at
a molecular level the features of both. This
should enable them to analyze systems involved in energy storage,
capture and molecular transport systems.
Section 3: Proteins, nucleic acids and regulatory networks
- Students should be able to define, in terms of molecular structure
and interactions, how information is stored in DNA, how it is
replicated (in general terms), how it is "expressed" in
the form of RNAs and proteins, how proteins function, and how
protein activity is regulated.
- Students should be able
to analyze how various changes in DNA sequence will influence
gene activity.
Section 4: Cell growth and life cycles
- Describe the molecular events involved in the regulation
of cellular differentiation and explain why cellular differentiation
hard to reverse.
- Describe the benefits and costs associated
with sexual reproduction and evaluate how sexual reproduction
lead to increased phenotypic diversity.
- Analyze various
scenarios dealing with conventional and alternative medicine,
and genetic engineering in terms of support, benefits and dangers.
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