Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Biology is the study of living organisms
Common features:
- are made of cells
- carry their own information - reproduce
- evolve
What they do:
- convert macromolecules - extract energy
- self-regulate
What they look like
- megadiverse from outside
- more and more similar as you go inside
Biology is the study of living organisms
Common features:
- are made of cells
- carry their own information - reproduce
- evolve
What they do:
- convert macromolecules - extract energy
- self-regulate
What they look like - diverse from outside
- more and more similar as you go inside
are made of cells….
All living forms are made of one or more cells (viruses do not,
but are they alive?)
The same apply for plant cells
A cell:
-Carries its own genetic information encoded in DNA
-Translates this information in structural or effector elements, generally proteins
-(divides to form a pluricellular animal, if it’s the case) -Reproduces
The cell is made of water, an inf inite number of small molecules, lipids, glucides, and so forth, although
bioinformatics mostly deals with DNA and proteins.
Monomers and polymers -Fats
-Glucides (many monosaccarids) -Proteins (20 aminoacids)
-Nucleic acids (4+1 nucleotides)
What’s about polymers
- Simplicity, many combinations with few building blocks - Economy, building blocks can be reused
The double helix is unwound by a helicase and topoisomerase one DNA polymerase produces the leading strand copy.
Another DNA polymerase binds to the lagging strand.
This enzyme makes discontinuous segments (called Okazaki fragments) before DNA ligase joins them together.
DNA
replication
In summary, in DNA:
-Building blocks and their assembly into DNA is
conserved.
-Sequence is all that matters.
-Three-dimensional structure is constant.
Databases report DNA
sequences (e.g. GenBank)
Bioinformatics involves the manipulation, searching, and data mining of biological data, and this includes DNA sequence data.
The development of techniques to store and search
DNA sequences have led to widely applied advances in computer science, especially string searching
algorithms, machine learning and database theory.
In summary, in proteins:
-Building blocks and their assembly into proteins is conserved.
-Sequence is variable and important.
-Three-dimensional structure can vary and it does matter as well.
Databases report protein sequences (e.g. GenBank) Others contain three dimensional structures (e.g. PDB)
The genetic code