B1 REVISION

Key knowledge
What are carbohydrates used for?

As an energy source

What are proteins used for?

For growth and repair

What are fats used for?

As an energy store, for insulation, to make cell membranes

What are vitamins and minerals needed for?

For healthy body functioning and to avoid deficiency

diseases.
You can be malnourished if your diet is not
balanced

Being overweight (obese) can lead to health problems such

as

Type 2 diabetes heart disease arthritis high blood

pressure

Being underweight can cause

Tiredness poor growth rate deficiency diseases

You will lose weight if

You take in less energy than you use

Metabolic rate is
The rate of chemical reactions in your cells

Three factors that affect metabolic rate are .

Gender age how active you are genetics

What do you need cholesterol for?

To make cell membranes and hormones

Which organ helps to balance good and bad cholesterol and

why are some people on a healthy diet at greater risk of
having high cholesterol?

Your liver and some people inherit genes that lead to high
levels.
What is a pathogen?
A disease causing microorganism.

What do bacteria do in your body to make you feel ill?

Reproduce rapidly, damage cells and produce toxins

What do viruses do in your body?

Take over cells and damage and destroy them

Why do we feel ill?

Cells are damaged, toxins are released and our immune
response leads to a high temperature, headaches and
rashes.
How do pathogens enter our body?
Through droplet infection, direct contact, contaminated
food and drink.
Give three ways that white blood cells help to fight
disease.
By ingesting and destroying pathogens.
By producing antibodies which destroy specific pathogens.
By producing antitoxins to counteract the toxins.

What is in a vaccine?
Dead or weakened pathogens.

What happens if you are infected after a vaccination?

You produce antibodies very quickly to destroy it.

What did Semmelweiss ask doctors to do?

Wash their hands to avoid transmitting infectious

diseases.
What does a drug do?
Alters the way your body functions

Name a drug that relieves symptoms but doesnt cure you.

Paracetamol.

What can antibiotics kill?

Bacteria

What can happen if you dont complete the course of

antibiotics?
Resistant bacteria can survive and reproduce rapidly to
form a new strain.
How can doctors help to avoid the development of
resistant bacteria?
Dont prescribe antibiotics unless it is really necessary.
What cant be killed by antibiotics?

Viruses because they are inside your cells.

Which famous antibiotic was first extracted from mould

by Alexander Fleming?
Penicillin

Name a well known resistant strain of bacteria

MRSA

What culture medium is used for growing bacteria?

Agar jelly.

Why do we incubate bacterial plates below 25C?

So we dont grow pathogens that are harmful to people.
Why must agar plates be sterilised before use?

To kill off unwanted microorganisms.

How can they be sterilised?

Autoclaving, using UV light or using gamma radiation

What is used to inoculate the agar jelly?

A sterilised wire loop.

Why is the petri dish sealed most of the way round?

To avoid contamination but allow oxygen in.

Industry incubates at higher temperatures? Why?

So the bacteria will reproduce faster.
What does MMR vaccinate us against?

Measles, mumps and rubella.

Why do mutations of pathogens sometimes lead to

epidemics?

No one has immunity to the new strain and there are no

vaccines yet so they reproduce rapidly and spread.

What is a pandemic?

An epidemic that spreads over several countries due to

modern travel.
What does a receptor do?

Detects changes in the environment.

What stimuli do eyes, ears and the nose and tongue

detect?
Light, sound/position, chemicals

What does the skin detect?

Touch, pressure, pain, temperature

What are the two types of effectors?

Muscles and glands

What do effectors do?

Produce a response
Which two parts make up the central nervous system?

Brain and spinal cord.

What is a bundle of neurons called?

A nerve

What does a sensory neuron do?

Carries an electrical signal from the receptor to the CNS

What does a motor neuron do?

Carries an electrical signal from the CNS to an effector.

How do effectors produce a response?

Muscles contract and glands secrete chemicals.
What are parts A and B?

Cell membrane and nucleus

Where do most of the chemical reactions in a cell take

place?
In the cytoplasm

Which organelles are the site of energy release during

respiration?
The mitochondria

What type of signal passes along a neuron?

An electrical impulse

How does the signal pass across a synapse?

A chemical is released and diffuses across.
State three ways that water leaves the body.

Sweat, urine, in our breath.

Which organs makes urine?

The kidneys

When our water levels are low, what happens to the volume
and concentration of our urine?
The volume is lower and it is more concentrated

Give two ways that ions are lost from our bodies.
In sweat and in urine.

What is our normal body temperature and why must it be

kept constant?
37C so our enzymes work at their optimum rate
Which hormone is released after eating to stop glucose
levels becoming too high?
Insulin.
What does insulin do?
Makes the liver and muscles take up glucose and store it as
glycogen.
What medical condition means we cannot control our
glucose levels?
Diabetes
How do hormones like insulin travel around the body?
In the blood.
Give two differences between hormone signals and nervous
signals?
Hormones signals are slower but reach all parts of the
body. Their effects are longer lasting.
Where are LH and FSH released from?

The pituitary gland.

Where are oestrogen and progesterone released from?

The ovaries

What does FSH do?

Causes an egg to mature and stimulates the ovaries to
produce oestrogen
What does LH do?
Stimulates ovulation ( egg release).
What three things does oestrogen do?
Causes the lining of the uterus to grow.
Causes LH to be released.
Inhibits ( switches off) FSH production
Which hormones are in the contraceptive pill?
Oestrogen and progesterone

How does it work?

Oestrogen at high levels switches off FSH production so
no eggs mature. Progesterone causes sticky mucus to be
released which blocks the cervix.

Which hormones can be given to women to improve

fertility?
FSH and LH
What happens during IVF?
FSH causes several eggs to mature.
They are collected and fertilised with sperm
Embryos develop
One or two are returned to the mothers uterus
What is a tropism?
A growth response in plants
What do shoots grow towards and away from?
Towards lights (positive) and away from gravity (negative).
What do roots grow towards and away from?
Towards gravity and water and away from light
Which hormone causes these effects?
Auxin
What effect does auxin have in shoots and roots?
It causes cell elongation in shoots and inhibits it in roots.
How does it cause shoots to bend towards the light?
It is distributed unevenly with more on the shaded side.
How does it make roots bend downwards?
There is more on the lower surface.
How can plant hormones be used commercially?
In weed killers to overstimulate growth. To produce fruit
without seeds.
Give three characteristics of a good medicine.
Effective Safe Stable

What are potential drugs tested on first?

Cells, tissues or organs.

What are the next stages?

Animal tests, human volunteers at very low doses, clinical
trials
What is a double blind trial?
Neither the doctors nor patients know who gets the real
drug and who gets the placebo
What was thalidomide developed for and what did it cause?
As a sleeping pill and then used to treat morning sickness.
Caused limb deformities in babies.
What was it used for later?
To treaty leprosy and some cancers.
What does a drug do?
Alters the way your body works

Name two highly addictive illegal drugs.

Heroin and cocaine.

Why do legal drugs cause more problems that illegal drugs?

Far more people take them.

What are statins taken for?

To reduce cholesterol levels
What health problems can cannabis trigger?
Mental illness and depression.

What drugs are used to build muscle mass in sport?

Anabolic steroids.
What do plants need to survive?
Light, carbon dioxide, water, oxygen, nutrients, space

What do animals need?

Food, water, oxygen, space, mates.

What are adaptations?

Special features that aid survival

What is an extremophile?
An organism adapted to survive in extreme conditions like
high temperatures, pressure or salty water eg. bacteria
around deep sea smokers, angler fish
Give three ways that animals can survive cold climates.
Small surface area to volume ratio
Insulation from a thick layer of fat
Thick coat
Why cant plants grow in the deep ocean?
There is no light

How do plants take in and lose water?

Through the root hairs, up the xylem to the leaves where
it evaporates through the stomata

How do cacti reduce water loss?

Very small leaves to reduce the surface area for
evaporation.
How do desert plants collect and store water?
Very big root system, wide and deep. Fleshy leaves or
stems for storage.

What is the most important factor that plants compete

for?
Light
Give six features that can aid survival in plants and animals.
camouflage, mimicry, thorns, speed, poison, hearing and
vision

Give three living factors that can affect populations.

Predators, food sources, competitors

Give two non-living factors.

Temperature, rainfall

What are biological indicators?

Living things that can show environmental change such as
pollution
Name an indicator species for air pollution and water
pollution
Lichens for air pollution and invertebrate animals like
sludge worms for water pollution
What is the energy source for life on Earth?
Solar energy
What do all food chains begin with?
A producer ( usually a plant)

What is a pyramid of biomass?

The biomass at each stage in a food chain drawn to scale.

How is energy lost at each stage in a food chain?

Not all of an organism is eaten
Some material is passed out as waste
Biomass is used to release energy by respiration
What do decomposers do and what conditions do they work
best in?
Break down waste and dead animals and plants to release
carbon dioxide, water and nutrients. Warm and damp with
oxygen present.
What process removes carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere?
Photosynthesis

What process in all living things adds carbon dioxide to the

atmosphere?
Respiration

What human activity returns lots of stored carbon back

into the atmosphere?
Burning fossil fuels

How is carbon transferred from plants to animals?

By feeding
What is the role of decomposers?
They release carbon dioxide from dead or waste material.
What do we inherit from our parents?
Genes which are small sections of DNA.

Where is this genetic information?

Inside the nucleus of cells. 46 thread like chromosomes
made of DNA ( a double helix shape) each contain
thousands of genes.

Why do chromosomes and therefore genes come in pairs?

We inherit one from each of our parents.

What are the two types of reproduction?

Sexual with two parents and asexual with one parent

What does sexual reproduction produce?

Variation in the offspring.
What are the two causes of variation?
Genetic and environmental.

What is a clone?
An identical copy of the parent.
How can plants be cloned?
By taking cuttings or by tissue culture.

How can animals be cloned?

By cloning the cells of an embryo or by adult cell cloning
using a donor egg with the nucleus removed, an adult cell,
an electric shock and a surrogate mother.

What happens during genetic modification?

A gene is removed from one species using enzymes and
inserted into the genetic material of a different species at
an early stage of development..
What did Lamarck believe about evolution?
That organisms acquired (gained) characteristics during
their lives and passed them on.

What did Darwin think?

That organisms compete to survive and the best adapted
ones survive long enough to breed and pass their
characteristics on to their offspring.
Why didnt people accept Darwins ideas at first?
No one knew about genes and how they could be passed on.
His ideas challenged the religious view at the time. He
didnt have enough evidence.
What Galapagos birds did Darwin study?
Finches
What are mutations?
Changes in existing genes that can sometimes make an
organism survive better.
What is classification?
Organising living things into groups.
Animals and plants are in two different kingdoms. if an
organisms has cells with cell walls and chloroplasts, which
kingdom is it in?
The plant kingdom.
What is the smallest group in classification?
A species.
What can all members of the same species do?
Breed successfully to produce fertile offspring.
What does an evolutionary tree show us?
The best model of the evolutionary relationships between
organisms (how closely related different species are).
How does DNA analysis help this process?
It shows how similar or different the DNA from different
species is.