what is life
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How do scientists ‘know’ and mediate uncertainty about what they know?
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
Contrast observations with categorisations
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
What are the principal determinants, for the textbook definition, if something is alive?
has Dna, Rna evolves can reproduce
Compare bacteria with viruses. Substantiate whether members of these categories are alive
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
What are the main (taxonomic) categories for living organisms? How are organisms placed into these categories?
domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species They use phylogenetic trees, dichotomous keys, cladograms
What are the 6 kingdomes
animalia, fungi, eubacteria, plantae, protista, archaebacteria
What is bias? How has human bias been exhibited in the categorization of living things?
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
What are other tools used to categorise and identify living things?
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.
describe protista
euk, 1500 species, mostly unicell ex slime moulds
describe plantae amt of specs, euk or prot?, how do they get energy, example, cell amt
multicell ex corpse flower 400 000 spec autotrophic euks
describe fungi
multi cell euk heterotrophs 300 000 specs
describe anamalia
probably 8.7 mill spec in reality 1.2 million specs humans are animals therefore we are biased towards animals euk
eubacteria vs archeabacteria
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
explain the wolf and mouse analogy
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