General Biology II Description
Living organisms display some amazing differences in their shape and activity. The average blue whale weighs nearly a 100,000 kg (110 tons) while pygmy shrews weigh in at less than 2 grams. Although the size difference is remarkable, it turns out that these organisms are more similar than one might expect from their appearance. As you now know after taking Bio I, they are both mammals and share characteristics like hair and mammary glands. In addition, they have remarkably similar fundamentals, sharing a similar internal chemistry, structure and metabolism. In fact, all life on earth shares many of these characterstics, and these "fundamentals of life" will be our focus in General Biology II.
We will examine the shared "fundamentals of life" beginning with the chemistry of biological systems (biochemistry) and ending with the storage, duplication and use of information in living systems (genetics). In the middle, we will examine the fundamental structure of life (cell biology) and the behavior of energy in these systems (cellular metabolism).
