Exam 1: Biology and the Tree of Life

Use the following information when answering the corresponding question(s). In 1668, Francesco Redi performed a series of experiments on spontaneous generation. He began by putting similar pieces of meat into eight identical jars. Four jars were left open to the air, and four were sealed. He then did the same experiment with one variation: Instead of sealing four of the jars completely, he covered them with gauze (the gauze excluded the flies while allowing the meat to be exposed to air). In both experiments, he monitored the jars and recorded whether or not maggots (young flies) appeared in the meat. -Refer to the paragraph on Redi's experiments. What hypothesis was being tested in the initial experiment with open versus sealed jars?

Spontaneous generation ________.

Use the following information when answering the corresponding question(s). In 1668, Francesco Redi performed a series of experiments on spontaneous generation. He began by putting similar pieces of meat into eight identical jars. Four jars were left open to the air, and four were sealed. He then did the same experiment with one variation: Instead of sealing four of the jars completely, he covered them with gauze (the gauze excluded the flies while allowing the meat to be exposed to air). In both experiments, he monitored the jars and recorded whether or not maggots (young flies) appeared in the meat. -Refer to the paragraph on Redi's experiments. In both experiments, flies appeared in all of the open jars and only in the open jars. Which one of the following statements is correct?

You have isolated and purified a new species of cells from the rain forest and you want to place this new species in the appropriate branch of the tree of life. You sequence the ribosomal RNA genes from these cells and discover that for one particular region of the ribosomal gene (the rRNA) the RNA sequence is AAUGAAGG. You have sequences from the same region of the ribosomal genes (the rRNA) from each of these species: bacteria, eukaryote and archaea, which are listed below. Bacteria AUAGAUGG Eukaryote AAAGAAGG Archaea AAUGGAGU Based on these sequence results, to which branch of the tree of life should you assign this new species?

A friend of yours calls to say that his car would not start this morning. He asks for your help. You say that you think the battery must be dead. If so, then jump-starting the car from a good battery will solve the problem. In doing so, you are ________.

Which of these provides evidence of the common ancestry of all life?

Agrobacterium infects plants and causes them to form tumors. You are asked to determine how long a plant must be exposed to these bacteria to become infected. Which of the following experiments will provide the best data to address that question?

In the process of science, which of these is NOT used to test a hypothesis?

In comparison to eukaryotes, prokaryotes ________.

Recall Pasteur's experiment on spontaneous generation. If he had just warmed the nutrient-rich broth, rather than boiled it, what would have been the likely outcome of his experiment? Cells would ________.

The following experiment is used for the corresponding question(s). -Refer to the accompanying figure. In every case, caterpillars that feed on oak flowers looked like oak flowers. In every case, caterpillars that were raised on oak leaves looked like twigs. These results support which of the following hypotheses?

Cells are ________.

Your colleague proposes to test the mechanism of ant navigation by placing a food source 7 meters (m) from the nest. She then takes ants from the nest and places them in a spot that is 4 m from the nest and 3 m from the food source. Based on the previous data, where do you expect the ants to start searching for their nest on their return trip?

Recall the experiment on ant navigation. To run a controlled experiment, what parameters were held constant for the test group of 75 ants?

Which of the following is the best description of a control for an experiment?

In presenting data that result from an experiment, a group of students show that most of their measurements fall on a straight diagonal line on their graph. However, two of their data points are "outliers" and fall far to one side of the expected relationship. What should they do?

The structure of double helical DNA ________.

Louis Pasteur's experiment had a good design because ________.

The formulation of a model for a structure or for a process serves which of the following purposes?

A controlled experiment ________.