AS Biology:Unit 1 Practice questions

Unit 1
1. What are the physical characteristics of water that make it useful to living things?
2. What are carbohydrates?
3. What are the main types of monosaccharide, and what roles do they have in living things?
4. How are disaccharides (sucrose, lactose and maltose) formed from monosaccharides?
5. How is Benedict's test used to detect reducing and non-reducing sugars?
6. What is the difference between the polysaccharides starch (amylose and amylopectin), glycogen and cellulose?
7. How is iodine used to detect starch?
8. What are triglycerides, and what roles do they have in living things?
9. What is the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats?
10. What are phospholipids, and how are phospholipid molecules arranged in cell membranes?
11. What makes up the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of a protein?
12. What are fibrous and globular proteins, and what roles do they have in living things?
13. How is the Biuret test used to detect protein?
14. What are DNA and RNA molecules made from, and how do they differ?
15. What is complementary base pairing?
16. What is semi-conservative replication of DNA, and how does it work?
17. How and where are DNA molecules transcribed into messenger RNA?
18. How and where are messenger RNA molecules translated into polypeptides?
19. How and where are polypeptides folded and assembled into finished protein molecules?
20. What is the Human Genome Project, and what issues does it raise?
21. What are enzymes?22. What factors affect the rate of an enzyme-catalysed reaction?
23. How do competitive and non-competitive inhibitors affect an enzyme?
24. How can enzymes be used commercially?
25. How and why can enzymes be immobilised?
26. What are prokaryotes and eukaryotes?
27. What are the components of a typical prokaryotic cell (bacterium)?
28. What are the components of a typical animal cell?
29. What are the components of a typical plant cell?
30. Why can electron microscopes achieve a higher magnification than light microscopes?
31. How do substances move in and out of cells?
32. What is osmosis, and how can it affect a cell?
33. What are endocytosis and exocytosis?
34. What is the difference between a tissue and an organ?
35. What are chromosomes made of?
36. What is the difference between mitosis and meiosis?
37. What are the stages of mitosis, and what happens at each stage?
38. What is cloning, when does it occur in nature, and how is it carried out artificially?