Biology 111
BIOL 111 - Introduction to Modern Biology @ UBC
In this post I will attempt to summarize all of the content from the BIOL 111 course at the University of British Columbia. Absolutely DO NOT cite this. Facts are very simplified and could even just be fully wrong!
Table of Contents
Course Structure
This was how the course was graded.
| Weekly Quizes | 15% |
| Weekly activities* | 15% |
| Poster* | 5% |
| Midterm | 10% |
| Video/poster* | 20% |
| Museum activity | 5% |
| Final | 25% |
* = Group assignment
So as you can see, most of the grades come from assignments rather than exams. Even in the exams you are allowed a memory sheet. I think this is because there is A LOT you are supposed to learn in this course and they know they are unable to sufficently teach all of it. The intent of BIOL 111 is to catch those who didn't take biology in high school up to those who did. It is pretty difficult to do that in just one term. By not relying on exams as much, people can get by not really knowing that much of the curriculum. This approach to the course was probably good for my grade but it still felt wrong to me.
The first half hour of the lectures was a mini lesson that was not related to the curriculum at all. In fact the professor even said that nothing in the mini lessons would show up on exams. You might ask "what is the purpose of attending these mini lessons then?" Well I was wondering the same thing. I purposely arrived at class half an hour late to skip them. The next hour would be spent on a group activity where we research something thats related to the topic we are at in the textbook.
The textbook is called "Life Matters: Connecting Biology to Your World". Every week we are assigned a new chapter to read and then do a quiz on. By the way we HAD to pay $100 for the textbook. The professors just happen to be authors so it seems pretty unethical to me. We already paid tuition and now we have to hand over another $100 or else fail the course. The University should change policy to stop this kinda thing happening.
Okay now that you know how much I hate how this course was run, here is hopefully all of the things you should know. I ordered it in the same way it was "taught."
Life
Life is pretty fucking cool. Like in the earliest days of our planet there wasn't any and then... wwgwgwgwwugug. Thats the sound of abiogenisis🤩 - life emerging from non life. How did it happen? I dunno, but clearly it did because ever since, life has been reproducing and evolving and speciating. Crazy, wild stuff! By the end of this section you should know what qualifies as life. You should know about the structure of cells, plants, and animals. And you should know how proteins are created based on information in DNA.
7 Qualifiers of Life
So you think you are alive, huh? Why don't you read through this criteria of qualities necessary in life to be sure of it!
Display Order
Harness and utilize energy
Reproduce
Respond to stimuli
Exhbit homeostasis (regulate their internal environment)
Growth and development
Population evolves over time
Honestly I disgaree with a lot of these. If replication happend but evolution somehow didn't, would that mean life wouldn't exist? If there was some organism that somehow had no need to regulate its internal environment, is it no longer life? If I cut my balls off would I cease to be an example of life? I would say no, but this list seems to say yes.
I think the only edge case in the categorization between life and nonlife would be viruses. Some scientists do consider viruses life but the textbook says NO because they can't reproduce without hijacking another organism.
Cells
Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes
You can split cells into two groups: Prokaryotes (Latin: before-nucleus) and Eukaryotes (Latin: true-nucleus).
Prokaryotes came first, then the better and cooler eukaryotes evolved from them.
The difference betwen the two is that prokaryote DNA - unlike eukaryote - isn't contained in a membrane-bound organelle (Nucleus). Instead prokaryote DNA just floats loosely in something called a Nucleoid???
With that strategy its easy to see why the only members of the prokaryote empire are the pathetic Bacteria and Archaea domains.
Eukaryotes however sport the greatest of what life has to offer (such as myself). More generally, eukaryotes have these 4 member kingdoms:
Plantae: Plants
Fungi: Fungi
Animalia: Animals
Protozoa: The hufflepuff of eukaryotes. (All the tiny boring things that aren't the other three).
Structures Shared by both
Eukaryotes came from prokaryotes, so naturally they share a lot of structures.
Diagram of typical prokaryote cell |
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Think its cool how weird little protein machines that reproduce came into existence on their own? Well take a look at the even more advanced eukaryote exclusive structures!
Eukaryote exclusives
Diagram of typical animal cell 
Diagram of typical plant cell |
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I'm sure the more sophisticated methods of transporting proteins really impressed you. If it didn't, remember that you have your entire existence to thank for it!
Plants
What's a plant?
If ever comes a time when you hear the question "What are plants?" escape an Alien's lips, heres what you should say:
"Plants are multicellular sessile primary producers that use photosynthesis"
Multicellular: Consists of many cells
Sessile: Incapable of self-locomotion
Primary producers: All nutrients in the food chain source from them
Photosynthesis: Use energy from light to make sugars
To this definition the Alien would say, "oh, Gobolovehgojyogas! We have those too!" (due to the phenomenon of convergent evolution, Aliens would probably have life forms analogous to plants)
Plant Specific Organelles
Plants cells are more rigid and also they do the photosynthesis thing!
The rigidity comes from tugor pressure which is internal pressure against the cell wall.
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Diagram of typical plant cell |
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Plant Growth
Plants grow from tissues called meristems (sorta like stemcells but for plants).
Meristems are made of undifferentiated cells that divide. These cells will later differentiate into specific roles in the plant.
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Apical meristem Apical meristems are the meristem tissues are the tips of the plant. We call it "apical" because thats like "apex" which is latin and using latin means we are smart and better than you. Primary growth is when plants grow taller through cell divisions in the apical meristems There is Shoot Apical Meristem at the top and Root Apical Meristem at the bottom. Roots have a root cap to protect the root apical meristem as they grow into the earth. Apical dominance is when one tip (usually the trunk) grows more than others. This occurs when an inhibiting growth hormone called auxin limits growth in other apical meristems. Axillary buds are areas of a plant which may develop into new shoots. Apical dominance halts their growth. |
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Lateral Meristem This is meristem tissue at the sides. Secondary growth is when cells increase in diameter through division in the lateral meristems. |
Root Systems
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Fibrous Roots System 
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Taproot System 
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The 3 Plant Tissue Systems
Dermal Tissue: Protective outer layer
Cuticle:
Waxy layer that prevents water loss
Trichomes:
Hairs
Guard Cells:
Controls opening of stomata (pores on leaves)
Vascular Tissue: Transports water, nutrients, and carbohydrates
Xylem:
Made of tracheory elements (they are dead lignified cells)
Transport stuff up
Phloem:
Made of sieve elements (they are living cells - thats all I know sorry)
Transport stuff down
Ground Tissue: Neither dermal, nor vascular
Sorry :/
Parenchyma Tissue:
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Latin: filler-tissue
Soft tissue that fills in portions of a plant (fruit flesh)
Collenchyma Tissue:
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Latin: glue-tissue
Flexible structural supports (celery strings)
Sclerenchyma Tissue:
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Latin: hard-tissue
Hard walls of dead lignifed tissue (nutshells)
Animals
Alright finallllly we are at animals. All biologists will tell you that animals are better than other life forms. Nobody cares about botany. NO ONE!
Animals are multicellular heterotophs (consume other organisms for energy). They can also move around and whatever.
The 4 Animal Tissues
Yeah thats right plants, we have FOUR
Epidermal Tissue:
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Protective outerlayer. Covers the body and internal organs.
Connective Tissue:
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I hope to god I don't have to know them all, but here they are...
It's loose I guess???
Loose Connective tissue 
idk
Fibrous Connective tissue 
Ears have cartilage
Cartilage 
YEAHHH BONES
Bone These guys from Doctor Who
Adipose (fat) 
Get it? He's a vampire.
Blood Nervous Tissue:
Generate and transmit electrical signals (neurons)
Muscle Tissue:
For movement. There are three types.
Skeletal muscle: Move limbs
Cardiac muscle: Move blood
Smooth muscle: Move stuff through digestive system
Okay, good job comitting all of that nonsense to memory! Now we can get to DNA which is the most cool thing about this course.
DNA
What is DNA
You probably know this so I'll keep it short.
DNA is a double stranded chain of nucleotides. Every nucelotide has a base.
The 4 bases are adenine(A), thymine(T), cytosine(C), guanine(G)
The bases have pairs that they hydrogen bond to.
A-T, and C-G
Sequences of these bases make up genes which code for proteins
There is secret fifth base called uracine(U) which can replace T. It is only used by RNA though because it is less stable and DNA (which should last a long time) requires stability more.
The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
Why is it called "the central dogma of molecular biology"? I don't have the slightest bit of a clue.
For some reason they chose that odd term to refer to "the flow of information from DNA to protiens."
In a simplified way it goes:
DNA ―transcription―> pre-mRNA ― RNA processing―> mature mRNA ― translation―> Proteins
You don't know what those are though, so I'll explain.
Transcription
So transcription is the process of creating an RNA copy of a gene (strand of DNA that codes for a protein).
RNA is like DNA but single stranded and can move around to go get translated into a protein.
We call this mRNA for messenger RNA because it will carry the genetic information from the DNA to the ribosomes.
Here are the steps of transcription
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Initiation:
Elongation:
Termination:
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RNA Processing
Fresh from creation, mRNA isn't ready to fufill its life's purpose (protein synthesis). There is still some processing to do first!
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Something called a 5' cap is added at the start (where the primer was) to protect the mRNA.
Its called "5' cap" because they use "5'" to refer to the start of the RNA. They call the start "5'" instead of "start" for some gross chemistry reason that I don't understand (its where the fifth carbon is???). 3' refers to the end of the RNA incase you need to know! (which hopefully you won't)
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Something called a Poly-A tail is added at the end, also to protect the mRNA.
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For some reason the mRNA has all these non-coding intron sequences. We have to remove them through Splicing and link all the coding exon sequences together with a protein called spliceosome.
Alright! Finally the mRNA is ready for its big show! We call mRNA that has been processed mature mRNA.
Translation
Now it gets real. DNA to RNA? pfff.. They're both chains of nucleotide bases. Translation is where it gets SERIOUS. I'm talking RNA to proteins baby! Nucleotide base sequences to amino acids! Yeah we are going there! Lets get INTO IT!!!
Codon:
Sequence of 3 nucleotide bases. Every codon corosponds to an amino acid. Some code for the same amino acids.
Anti-Codon:
Codon which is made of the base pair of another codon
Amino Acid:
Molecules that will combine to create a protein
tRNA (transfer RNA):
RNA with an amino acid attached
Polypeptide chain:
Chain of multiple amino acids. When it is "large enough" it is deemed a protein
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Initiation:
Elongation:
Termination:
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Good job! Now you have finished learning the most interesting thing in this course! Its all downhill from here.
Epigenetics
Actually epigentics is reallly fricking cool. Basically its about how your phenotype (expressed genes) can change without your genotype changing. These changes can even be passed to offspring! Does that sound CRAZY to you? Yeah, yeah I bet it does.
Chromatin:
DNA is wrapped around a protein (histones) which forms chromatin.
When chromatin is tight (heterochromatin) traits are less expressed, and when loose (Euchromatin) they are more expressed.
The tightness can change over your life and can be passed on to your children
Read this wikipedia aricle cause it actually is really cool.
Ecosystems
Oh no. Not ecosystems! Why hath thou foresaken us to study a subject so dreadful?
Speciation
Definitions of Species: Just like life, the definition of species is subjective. Because of this there are many interpretations.
Biological: Organisms that can interbreed to produce fertile offsprings
Morphological: Organisms that have the same appearance
Genetic: Organisms that interbreed and are geneticall isolated from other groups
Phylogenetic: Organisms that share a common ancestor
Chronospecies: Organisms that share a position in time
The biological interpretation is the one you should care about. Also keep in mind that there are organisms that only interbreed to produce infertile offspring. Mules, child of donkey and horse, are incapable of reproducing. Very sad for them.
Speciation:
The creation of a species.
Occurs when two populations lose the ability of interbreeding to produce fertile offspring. There are 2 ways this can happen.
Prezygotic Barrier: Prevents SEXUAL contact or fertilization
"Yo mama's face so ugly, biologists categorize it as a prezygotic barrier"
Postzygotic Barrier: The offspring is sterile
Population Pairings: Species proximity
Sympatric: Living in the same area
Allopatric: Not living in the same area
Parapatric: Side by side - no overlap
Speciation in Sympatric Populations: Speciation while occupying the same area is a strange one isn't it? How do you lose the ability to interbreed while living with each other? Well anyone married longer than 5 years might be able to tell you ha ha ha... Seriously though, how?
Mutation: Some individuals now require specific environmental conditions due to mutation
Divergent Selection: Species spreads out and individuals now have different resource requirements
Disruptive Selection: There is selection pressure for extreme changes but not intermediary - creating two distinct groups.
Hybridization: Breeding between species creates a ferile offspring
Ring Species: Species spreads out away from a point. Individuals form a ring with one break. Individuals at each end of the break become unable to interbreed
Evolution and Selection
Evolution and selection is really fucking cool but I won't spend so much time on it cause we don't really learn anything that isn't super basic or common knowledge. You know the story: Biotic factors like interspective (between species) and intraspective (within species) competion, as well as abiotic factors like climate create selection pressure which gives some organisms an advantage in spreading genes through the gene pool, founder effect, natural selection, evolution, intelligent design is false, god is dead, blah, blah ,blah...
Convergent Evolution
Doesn't this guy look like a dog? (he's not)
Ecology
Ecology:
The relationship between organisms and their environment
Communities:
All the populations of species within a given place and time
Mutualism: Both species benefit
Bees polinating flowers
Commensalism: One species benefits, other doesn't care
According to wikipedia "Remoras feed on the manatee's faeces. The manatee is not affected by this interaction, as the remora does not deplete the manatee's resources." 🙂👍
Parasitism: One species benefits, other is harmed
The pork tapeworms lives inside human small intestines and FEASTS - stealing energy form the human
Invasive species:
An introduced species that outcompetes native species
Endemic species:
Species that only exist in one region
Trophic level:
How distanced a species energy source is away from primary producers
So plants are level 1 cause they are primary producers. Herbivores level 2, carnivores level 3, apex predators level 4...
Trophic cascade: How changes at one end of the food chain will affect species at the other
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Top down control: Higher levels (apex predators) influencing those below
Bottom up control: Lower levels (plants) influencing those above
Keystone species:
Species with a dispropotionately high influence on the environment base on their population.
Beavers, starfish, apex predators
Niche:
Habitat and resources a species requires.
Competitive Exclusion Principal (Gause's Law):
Two species cannot occupy the same niche and have stable population levels.
Climax Community:
Ecosystem is stable.
Disturbance:
Events that alter properties of the ecosytem - destabilizing it.
eg) tree falls, whale carcass falls to the ocean floor, earthquake
Succession:
How a community changes following a disturbance.
Primary: Development of a community from a baren environment
Secondary: Severe disturbance (like a forest fire) wipes out a lot of a community and then it redevelopes over time.
The stages of succession go grasses then shrubs then trees.
Carrying Capacity:
The maxmimum population of a species an environment can hold due to limiting factors such as access to energy.
Growth models: Mathermatical models for predicting population growth.
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Exponential:
Grows exponentially 🙄 (blue)
Logistic:
Grows and then hits carrying capactiy and stabilizes (brown)
Generation Time:
Time it takes for a species to reach reproductive age.
r/K selection theory:
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This equation is used to logistically model populations
\[\text{derivative of population}=rN(1-\frac{N}{K})\]N: population
r: reproduction rate
K: carrying capacity
r/k selection theory says that species either evolve to optimize for reproducion rate (r strategists) or carrying capactiy (K strategists).
r Strategists:
Small
Short lives
Have many offspring
Low generation time
Most don't survive to adulthood
eg) insects, rats, grasses
K Strategists:
Large
Long lives
Have few offspring
High generation time
Require more parental care
Higher liklihood of surviving to adulthood
eg) humans, whales, elephants
I'm glad we are K strategists. Imagine having an expected lifespan of two hours.
Survivorship curve:
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An individual's probability of surviving as it gets older
So yeah, real boring stuff.
Symbiosis: Long term interactions between species
Population
Population ecology is about studying changes in population size.
They have math and data visualizations so I guess its kind of cool.
Human Health
Cell Cycle
Mitosis:
Isn't actually a part of mitosis - happens just before it | |
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Cytokinesis:
Cell divides.
In animal cells an indent called a cleavage furrow (hahah) forms and gets tighter and tighter till it splits the cell in half.
For plants a new cell wall called a cell plate forms - splitting the cell in half.
Cell cycle checkpoints: Processes which check for errors and fixes them if they are found. Proteins do them in ways I do not understand.
G1/S Checkpoint:
Between G1 and S phase
Ensures replication and growth went good
G2/M Checkpoint:
Between G2 phase and mitosis
Ensures replication and growth went good again
Spindle Checkpoint:
During mitosis
Ensures the spindle is grabbing the chromosomes correctly
M Checkpoint:
During metaphase
Ensures the chromosomes are correctly aligned before division
Cancer
Cancer happens when cells divide like crazy without regulation.
Genes that have a possibility of mutating to form these cancerous cells are called proto-oncogenes.
Proto-oncogenes tend to be genes that code for programmed cell death (apoptosis) or limiting growth.
When mutations break these genes they become oncogenes and produce cancerous cells.
Cancerous cells divide unregulated to create lumps called tumours (or neoplasms if you want to use a word no one will understand)
Benign tumour: Grows slow and isn't invading other parts of the body. Usually harmless. Not called cancer.
Malignant tumour: Grows FAST and IS invading other parts of the body. Dangerous! Cancer.
4 Types of Cancer
Carcinomas:
Latin: Sore/ulcer/cancer
On surfaces of the body (skin, lining of digestive system, etc)
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Sarcomas:
Latin: flesh-process 💀
On supportive tissue (muscle, bone, etc)
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Lymphomas:
Latin: water-disease
White blood cells
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Leukemia:
Latin: white-blood (its confusing but its because people with leukemia have high white blood count for some reason)
Blood forming tissues (bone marrow, spleen)
Metastasis:
The spread of cancerous cells throught the body
The cancerous cells take a fun little ride through the circulatory system to find new places to conquer and form tumours!
Chemotheropy
A treatment for cancer where high-energy radiation is applied to tumours in hopes it will damage cancerous cell dna till they cannot replicate.
Chemotheropy does not just target cancer cells so people undergoing the treatment feel really really bad during it.
Cancer Stem Cell Hypothesis
The belief that cancer stem cells are the main cells which drive metastasis and replication.
New research seeks to find a way to target these cancer stem cells
The academics who developed the cancer stem cell hypothesis were Canadian (the textbook is really proud of this).
Apoptosis
Programmed cell death.
Important so that damaged cells don't continue to replicate.
Hormones
Hormones are molecules that communicate something to cells. When released, hormones become bonded to receptor proteins which is how cells sense the hormone.
Hormomes are like neurotransmitters but hormones are slow acting on many areas of the body while neurotransmitters are fast acting on just one area of the body.
autocrine regulation is when hormone communcated with the cell that released it. This happens to adjust sensitivy to stimuli
Paracine regulation is when the hromone acts on neighbour cells.
Peptide hormones: bind to the surface of cell membrane (adrenaline)
Steroid and fatty acid hormones: bind to water soluable carrier proteins to be transported around. Bind to receptors in cytoplasm or nucleus. Sythesize new proteins so are slow acting. (estrogen and testosterone)
Endocrine glands secrete hormones into blood
Plant Hormones
Auxin - growth hormone
Gibberellins
Cytokinins
Ethylene
Brassinosteroids
Abscisic acid
Phototropism: Plants grow toward light
Gravitropism: Plants grow against gravity
Thigmotropism: Plant senses touch
Phytochromes: Plant protein that senses day and night
Diabetes is a problem with the sythesis or use of insulin. This prevents breaking down sugars
Nutrition
What are nutrients?
Organisms need molecules to continue existing. Some are used to build their special little protiens and others are broken a part so they can use the released energy. We call all of these molecules nutrients.
Macronutrients are molecules they need "a lot of" and micronutrients are ones they only need "a little of."
Nutrient types:
Vitamins:
Micronutrients.
Groups of molecules needed to build proteins.
Humans need 13 (its a crime if they test them all so I'm not writing them out)
Minerals:
Elements an organism needs.
eg) Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, etc
Essential fatty acids
Essential amino acids
Nutrient Deficency: Weird bad things (like dying) happen when organisms are deficient of nutrients.
Plants
9 Plant macronutrients:
Nitrogen 🪨
Phosphorus 🪨
Potassium 🪨
Calcium 🪨
Magnesium 🪨
Sulphur 🪨
Carbon 🌀
Oxygen 🌀
Hydrogen 🌀
8 Plant micronutrients:
Chlorine
Iron
Manganese
Boron
Zinc
Copper
Nickel
Molybdenum
Good luck memorizing!
How do plants get these nutrients:
So I don't know if you knew this but plants have something called roots and leaves.
Leaves suck up the gases O2 and CO2.
Root hairs absorb water and other minerals through diffusion. The minerals are charged though so the roots release CO2 which leads to H+ being produced. This neutralizes the minerals and makes them "more available"
Nitrogen in the soil comes from nitrogenfixing bacteria which produce NH3. NH3 becomes NH4+ after reacting with water. This can then be absorbed by the roots. This process forms a mutualistic symbiotic relationship where the plants give the bacteria carbohydrates and the bacteria give the plant nitrogen.
Animals
Here are the TOP 4 ways animals ingest food!
Deposit Feeders: Eat soil and deacying matter
Fluid Feeders: Yeah they do some drinking 😎 (nectar, blood)
Filter Feeders: Eat tiny things filtered from the water
Bulk Feeders: They eat some big ass objects (huamans and most larger animals are this)
Disease
Agents of disease
Viruses (SARS-CoV-2, smallpox, HIV)
Bacteria (bubonic plague, tuberculosis)
Fungi (athletes's foot, nail fungus, jock itch 💀)
Protozoans (malaria, giardiasis)
Worms (hookworm, tapeworm)
Types of transmission
Anthroponoses: Human to Human
Zoonoses: Animals to Human
Both of these can be direct (disease jumps right to another host) or indirect (the disease leaves an infected organism - hangs around in the environment - and then infects another person).
Biotechnology
What is biotechnology
Using organisms for our own purposes. The textbook considers letting bacteria ferment milk or using yeast to make bread rise as a biotechnology. That definition is super odd though. Is riding a horse a biotechnology? I dunno.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR):
A way to multiply DNA segments. DNA is heated till the two strands break apart ( denaturation) - dna polymerase fills in complementary strands - repeat. A machine called a thermocycler changes the heat to facilitate the reactions.
Genetically Modified Organism (GMO):
We alter the genomes of these organisms to our liking! We can now DECIDE what proteins are synthesized! WE ARE GODS TOYING WITH THE VERY BASIS OF LIFE!!!
GMOs are cool cause it can make plants more resistant to pests like Bt corn or make plants more nutritious like golden rice. We can also do fucked up things like make fruit flies be born without eyes... or even more fucked up things like make fruit flies be born with the bodies coated in eyes.
Plants can be genetically engineered through many methods. One is lateral transfer where genetic material stored in a plasmids is passed into cells (bacteria does this naturally). Incorporating DNA from other organisms is called transformation. Other ways include biolistics which is just using a gun to shoot the dna into the plant???, and then theres using protoplasts which are cells without cell walls. Because the wall isn't there you can get DNA inside I guess...
And thats it I think? Well probably not actually. Don't blame me if you are tested on stuff that I never wrote about! I do hope you found this useful though. Share it with other people in your class if you want!
