Draw a shell diagram that Carbon and Potassium.”
“Draw a shell diagram that shows a molecule of Calcium Chloride.”
“Draw a shell diagram that shows a molecule of ammonia.”
Your drawing may be hand drawn or you may generate on the computer. You may not copy an image from the internet.
Discussion 1: You are a marine biologist studying clams that occur in extreme environments. You are examining clams growing near a deep sea hydrothermal vent (temp. 60 deg C), and comparing them to clams found in ice-cold seawater in Antarctica . You notice that the phospholipids from the ice clams have a much higher proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids, while the hydrothermal vent clams have a much higher proportion of saturated fatty acids.
Explain how a polyunsaturated fatty acid differs from a saturated fatty acid .
Compare and contrast the structural characteristics of the cell membrane for the ice clams vs. the vent clams. In addition to your written description, your answer should also include a cartoon-type sketch of the molecules forming the membrane for each, emphasizing the differences.
Explain how you would expect the permeability of the membrane to change for the ice clams if you experimentally replaced their polyunsaturated fatty acid tails with the fully saturated fatty acid tails from the deep sea vent clams. You may wish to refer back to the sketch from part (b).
Based on your answers above, explain why the ice clams have evolved to have more polyunsaturated fatty acids in their membrane to allow them to survive at very low temperatures.
Your response should address your peer’s logic and clarify, as well as identify differences between your post and theirs. This should be more substantial than “What a great response, Your response is similar to mine. We thought the same way”. Try to identify responses dissimilar if possible.
Discussion#2: There was a recent article in Science Magazine that talks meteorite that crashed in Costa Rica which has Ribose sugars, but no deoxy ribose sugars and over a 100 amino acids, many of which have never been found on earth. This is an exceptional popular science article made for general public consumption.
MAGAZINE ARTICLE
Consider the roles played by DNA, RNA and proteins. Based on the materials found in this meteorite, what are the hypothesis you can generate about how life originated on earth, the macromolecules they possessed, how they might have replicated to survive and the possibilities for LUCA.