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The following Critical Thinking questions are meant to providedeeper understanding of biology topics after students havewatched this week's Panopto lectures. Attempting to answers thesebefore lectures have been watched, may compromise yourunderstanding and participation in this course.
In the future, I will be subdividing the class into smalleronline groups to answer these questions so it may be lessintimidating for the \"shy\" person, but for this first one I wantedto do it as a class.
How do your get graded? Well, you are NOT graded on whether youanswer the questions correctly! You are graded on how well you usecritical thought from our lecture and chapter readings tosynthesize answers. Your posts should NOT be long, multi-paragraphessays but rather concise statements that are well thought out.They can even be in the form of a question or inquiry such as \"...Iknow that only proteins have disulfide bridges so if a stain bindsto these groups then it should change color, however I'm not surehow that relates to the question...\". Help each other out if somepeople are struggling to understand the question or are havingdifficulty seeing a point of view. Some questions may not have acorrect answer! I will reveal the answers or possible answers afterthe due date.
For each question below post one criticalthinking post and one critical thinking reply toanother student before the due date (that's a total of 8 posts alltogether). Note that your posts doesn't have to answer the questioncompletely...partial answers to a question are fine!
Macromolecules
- Trans-fatty acids are a type of unsaturated fat. Mosttrans-fats consumed today are industrially created as a side effectof partial hydrogenation of plant oils (Crisco). In trans-fatmolecules, the hydrogens on the doubly bonded carbon atoms(characteristic of all unsaturated fats) are straighter, ratherthan kinked, in shape. Why do you think trans-fats are consideredunhealthy as compared to other unsaturated fats? Can you explainyour answer chemically?
- Why might an evolutionary biologist be interested in comparingthe amino acid sequence of proteins between two different species?What differences might she find when comparing species that aredistantly related or closely related? Explain.
- Some viruses carry their genetic material as DNA while others,known as retroviruses, carry their genes as RNA. Virologistsstudying emerging viruses that might infect humans are interestedin discovering which types would be the most difficult for ourimmune system to fight. Viruses that mutate quickly and thus, areable to thwart our immune defenses are the most concerning. Whichof these two viruses, DNA or RNA, do you think mutate faster?Explain.
