LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR BIOLOGY 243

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1 LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR BIOLOGY 243 This document outlines the learning objectives (what students will know, understand or be able to do) after completing Biology 243. For some learning objectives, explicit learning outcomes have been provided as well; these outcomes are specific, measureable learning goals that illustrate one way in which students should be able to demonstrate their knowledge. I. LECTURE COMPONENT: CONSISTS OF FIVE THEMES: THEME 1: WHAT IS EVOLUTION? THEME 2: THE MOLECULAR BASIS OF INHERITANCE THEME 3: DECODING GENETIC INFORMATION THEME 4: TRANSMITTING GENES IN INDIVIDUALS AND POPULATIONS THEME 5: PHYLOGENY, MACROEVOLUTION AND EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY THEME 1: WHAT IS EVOLUTION? A. Where does biological diversity come from? B. What is evolution and how do we study it? C. What are the required conditions for natural selection to occur? D. Where did the idea of evolution by natural selection come from - what ideas does it rely on? E. Wallace: co-discoverer of natural selection - less detailed evidence for evolution than Darwin F. Lamarck: transmutation, species not fixed G. Malthus: exponential population growth, constraint by resources H. Lyell: ancient earth, uniformitarianism (using present processes to explain past) Learning Objectives 1: 1. Define evolution as the change in allele frequencies over generations 2. Explain the process of evolution by natural selection in their own words 3. Link the importance of existing variation within a population to the process of natural selection 4. Explain why heritable variation leading to differential fitness is essential for the process of evolution THEME 2: THE MOLECULAR BASIS OF INHERITANCE A. DNA as information molecule a. How do we know DNA is the information-carrying molecule? b. Griffith c. Avery, McLeod & McCarthy d. Hershey & Chase e. How do genes produce a phenotype? 1

2 B. DNA structure a. How was DNA structure discovered? b. What is DNA structure and how can it store information? c. How is DNA arranged in cell, how does this differ in prokaryotes and eukaryotes? C. DNA replication a. Establishing semi-conservative replication b. How is DNA replicated in prokaryotes and eukaryotes? Learning Objectives 2A: 1. Explain in your own words the results of the three classical experiments (Griffith; Avery, McLeod & McCarthy; Hershey & Chase) 2. Explain how gene expression and protein expression produce a phenotype 3. Describe the benefits associated with a better understanding of genes and genomes 4. Describe the structure of DNA Learning Objectives 2B: 1. Explain how Watson and Crick combined their molecular modeling approach with other sources of data to solve the structure of DNA 2. Describe the main differences between chromosomes in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells 3. Describe how chromatin is organized in eukaryotes and their effects on gene expression 4. Explain the process of DNA replication Learning Objectives 2C: 1. Explain in your own words the experiments that determined that DNA replication is semiconservative 2. Explain the main steps and enzymes of DNA replication 3. Explain why lagging and leading strand synthesis occur at replication forks 4. Explain the replication end problem and the solution THEME 3: DECODING GENETIC INFORMATION A. Central Dogma a. DNA encodes RNA, which encodes proteins b. How do RNA viruses reproduce? c. What are properties of information carrying molecule? d. Not all DNA codes for proteins B. Transcription a. How are genes in DNA encoded into RNA? b. How do cells with same DNA become different cell types? c. How are genes modified during transcription? d. How does transcription and posttranscriptional regulation differ in prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms? 2

3 C. Translation a. How are mrnas translated into functional proteins? b. How do the processes of translation differ in prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms? D. Mutation a. What happens when there is an error in a DNA sequence? b. What kinds of errors can happen in DNA? c. How do we determine the function of genes? d. How do we characterize mutations? Learning Objectives 3A: 1. Describe in your own worlds the genetic code and explain how it relates to the central dogma 2. Explain how the auxotrophic mutants isolated by Beadle and Tatum support the one gene-one polypeptide hypothesis 3. Describe template and coding strands and relate how genes are organized on both DNA strands of a chromosome 4. Describe the orientation (5-3 or 3-5 ) of molecules in the central dogma 5. Describe the origin of the information system Learning Objectives 3B: 1. Explain how different cells and tissues can form from an identical genome 2. Describe the main steps of transcription 3. Describe the structure and function of promoters and enhancers 4. Explain posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression 5. Explain how transcription is affected by chromatin structure 6. Explain how introns and exons are advantageous in eukaryotes Learning Objectives 3C: 1. Explain what is the genetic code and describe the experiments that led to its discovery 2. Understand the structure and role of rrna and trna in translation 3. Distinguish between the E, P, and A sites of the ribosome 4. Compare and contrast the main steps of translation in prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells 5. Know the basic structure of an amino acid and a peptide bond and be able to name the types of amino acids and their main differences Learning Objectives 3D: 1. Explain how mutations occur in the genome and the differences between spontaneous and induced mutations and germline and somatic mutations 2. Explain how mutations can change the amino acid sequence of a polypeptide 3. Explain how creating mutants in genetic model systems can help us infer the function of genes 4. Define alleles and describe the types of alleles and their effect on gene function 3

4 THEME 4: TRANSMITTING GENES IN INDIVIDUALS AND POPULATIONS A. Mendelian inheritance a. Review rules of probability b. What did Mendel's experiments show? c. What is dominance? d. Testcrosses: how do we determine whether an individual is a dominant heterozygote or a homozygote? e. What are the exceptions to Mendelian dominance? f. How do Mendel's factors relate to DNA? g. Why do some traits appear to blend and others are discrete? B. Population genetics and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium a. How do we know whether or not evolution is occurring in a population? b. How do we test whether or not a population is in Hardy Weinberg equilibrium? c. Under what conditions do we expect to find populations to be in HWE? d. How realistic are the assumptions of HWE? C. Selection, species and speciation a. What types of natural selection exist? b. How can selection operate in ways that seem maladaptive? c. What non-selective forces can act in evolution? d. How do we define and recognize species? e. How do new species form? Learning Objectives 4A: 1. Explain what alleles and genes are, and how their expression results in different phenotypes 2. Explain how meiosis determines the frequency and genotype of gametes of homozygous and heterozygous individuals 3. Explain Mendel s genetic crosses (monohybrid cross and test cross) and the associated genotypic and phenotypic ratios 4. Explain the difference between dominant and recessive alleles 5. Explain the difference between incomplete dominance and co-dominance and how these affect phenotypic ratios Learning Objectives 4B: 1. Describe the difference between discrete and continuous traits 2. Be able to calculate allele and genotype frequencies for a population 3. Be able to explain why HWE is a null hypothesis for evolutionary change 4. Understand how to apply the Hardy-Weinberg equation and Chi-square test to test whether populations appear to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium 5. Be able to use Hardy-Weinberg equation to predict genotype frequencies for populations assumed to be in equilibrium 6. Describe in their own words the major assumptions of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and how violations of assumptions affect testing for HWE 4

5 Learning Objectives 4C: 1. Distinguish the general differences between balancing, directional and stabilizing selection 2. Explain what sexual selection is 3. Explain Bateman s Principle 4. Explain what drift and inbreeding are and why they are more important in small populations 5. Describe the major forms of reproductive isolation and modes of speciation 6. Describe the Biological Species Concept and distinguish it from the Morphological Species Concept THEME 5: PHYLOGENY, MACROEVOLUTION AND EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY A. Phylogeny a. How to read a phylogeny b. How phylogenies are inferred and the principle of parsimony c. How do we determine which traits are ancestral and which are derived? d. How do we map phylogenetic trees onto taxonomic classification? e. Monophyletic, paraphyletic and polyphyletic groups f. How can we use phylogenies to answer evolutionary questions? B. Macroevolution a. What is macroevolution, and how does it differ from microevolution? b. What are adaptive radiations? c. Anagenesis and cladogenesis d. Is evolution always gradual? e. How can major morphological changes occur? C. History of Life a. How old is Earth, and how do we know? b. How did life originate on Earth? c. Extinction and mass extinction, why are they important in evolution? d. Major events: first prokaryotic cells, first eukaryotes, endosymbiosis, multicellurarity, Great oxygenation event, Cambrian explosion, transition to land Learning Objectives 5A: 1. Be able to explain in own words homology and the principle of parsimony 2. Compare and contrast homology and homoplasy 3. Describe the steps and techniques used in inferring phylogenies based on a set of data 4. Understand relationships between groups of species inferred by a given phylogeny 5. Be able to recognize a monophyletic group, paraphyletic group, polyphyletic group 5

6 Learning Objectives 5B: 1. Distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution 2. Distinguish between anagenesis and cladogenesis and relate these processes to the patterns of phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium 3. Define an adaptive radiation Learning Objectives 5C: 1. Describe the main hypotheses for the origin of biological molecules 2. Describe the Urey-Miller experiments and their significance 3. Explain in their own words the ecological importance of the shift to an oxygen atmosphere, and the reasons for the slow rise of oxygen 4. Describe the Cambrian Explosion and the features of ancestral metazoans 5. Describe the timing of major events of the history of life (oxygenation, multicellularity, Cambrian explosion, invasion of land, origin of seeds, Great Dying) 6. Explain the criteria used to define mass extinctions, describe the pattern of mass extinctions in the fossil record, and explain in their own words the evolutionary importance of mass extinctions II. LABORATORY COMPONENT Learning Objectives (skills) 1. Generate a null hypothesis for a study 2. Create a flowchart to summarize an experimental procedure 3. Use summary statistics in statistical tests (Chi-square test and t-test) to decide whether or not to reject a null hypothesis 4. Write a discussion section including references to the scientific literature, including literature cited section and appendix containing summary of statistics 5. Create a phylogenetic data set and use it to generate a phylogenetic hypothesis 6. Use sterile technique in plating organisms 7. Transform bacteria using plasmids 8. Read primary scientific literature and summarize information presented Specific topics (may change in future) 1. DNA extraction and DNA structure 2. Recognizing stages of mitosis, testing effects of caffeine on meiosis 3. Identify stages of meiosis 4. Testing effects of UV radiation on mutation rate and cell survival 5. Genetic engineering using plasmids 6. Mendelian genetics of corn 7. Testing for the occurrence of evolution using Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium 8. Natural selection: salinity tolerance in bacterial populations 9. Variation and natural selection simulations in snails 10. Phylogenetic analysis: building phylogenetic trees 6