Study Guide 1-5

Lecture 1.5 Competencies and Study Guide

Introduction to Metabolism

Vocabulary

  • Metabolism
  • Glycolysis
  • Fermentation
  • Krebs cycle
  • Controls (Including positive and negative)

Competencies

  1. Describe the Mars Viking program, including primary mission goal and number of spacecraft/landers.
  2. Explain which characteristic of life was used as the basis of the experiments on the Viking landers.
  3. Describe what Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace discovered in their experiments on guinea pigs and humans.
  4. Describe the source of carbon that humans and other organisms breathe out, and why we breathe in oxygen.
  5. Balance the basic equation of oxidative metabolism.
  6. Explain the inputs and outputs of glycolysis, fermentation and the Krebs cycle, and state how many enzymes are involved in each process.
  7. Compare and contrast how cells metabolize pyruvate when oxygen is present and when it isn’t.
  8. Compare and contrast fermentation in plants or fungi vs. animals.
  9. State how many life-detection experiments were on each Viking lander.
  10. Describe in as much detail as you can the design of the Labeled Release (LR) experiment on the Viking landers.
  11. Explain which results of the LR experiment would be positive and which would be negative.
  12. Describe the purposes of positive and negative controls; identify in an experiment like a test for HIV, which portions are positive and negative controls and which is (are) the test.
  13. Interpret results from the LR experiment, both controls and tests run on Mars.
  14. Explain from memory the results and proper interpretation of Viking’s LR experiments and compare them to Viking’s other life-detection experiments.