The Average American Can’t Answer These Simple Biology Questions

Biology is a common subject in American schools, but many students leave their classes utterly confused about the details and without the answers to simple biology questions. This is because biology is such a broad, diverse field. It's defined as the scientific study of organisms including their evolution, growth, function, and how they interact with the environment and each other.

It focuses on humans, plants, animals, and all other living things. Biologists study the behavior, genetics, and cellular processes of living organisms in fields like botany, zoology, genetics, and microbiology. But even though it's often a required course in high school or college, there are still some basic questions about biology that the average American can't answer.

How do plants make food?

Plants can make their own food through a process called photosynthesis. There are three main ingredients needed for this process: water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. The plant's leaves trap the sun's energy within their leaves. They use this energy to change the water in their roots into glucose and oxygen. Leaves often have a green pigment because they contain chlorophyll which is used to absorb energy from the sun.

What is often titled the powerhouse of the cell?

The mitochondria are often called the powerhouse of the cell. It uses a process called cellular preparation to create energy, earning it the "powerhouse" title. The mitochondria are responsible for producing the majority of the cell's energy, which allows the cell to perform a long list of biochemical reactions.

What is a food chain?

A food chain is a linear model showing how food goes from the most basic organism to others. At the bottom of the food chain are things like algae and plants because they make their own food. Primary consumers come next and eat producers. These are often leaf-eating insects and other herbivores. Next come secondary consumers, like spiders, snakes, and fish that eat herbivores.

The third type of consumer is a tertiary consumer. These are often large carnivores like birds of prey, sharks, and wolves. After consumers come decomposers. These are organisms like bacteria and fungi that break dead organisms into the basic materials plants need to make food. In this way, the entire food chain is complete, and the same materials are used repeatedly to feed an entire ecosystem.

What does the immune system do?

The immune system is made up of a network of organs, tissues, and cells that work to identify and eliminate harmful things in the body. These can include cancer cells, parasites, viruses, and bacteria. This keeps you healthy in most cases by destroying the things that make you sick before they can spread.

There are two types of immunity. The first is innate immunity, which is the body's first line of defense. The immune system sends a non-specific, rapid response to things like stomach acid, mucous membranes, and skin barriers. The second type of immunity is adaptive immunity, which is a more targeted response. In this case, the immune system recognizes things it's seen before and sends specialized cells to attack them. This is how you develop long-term immunity to many diseases.

What is a virus?

Once a virus is inside a host organism, it can replicate quickly and make you very sick. They can infect animals, humans, plants, and any other living organism. They are so small that they have to be seen under a microscope, and for how much havoc they can cause on the body, they are amazingly simple.

A virus holds a small piece of genetic information in the form of RNA or DNA, and it lives within a protective shell. Some even have an envelope to protect them. Common viruses you may know are COVID-19, the common cold, and the flu. They enter the body through mucous membranes and come in all shapes and sizes. Viruses can't be treated by an antibiotic.

What is homeostasis?

Despite external factors, an organism must maintain a stable internal environment. The human body uses a variety of processes and systems to not only maintain stability but also to constantly check the body for anything that is off.

Blood pressure, body temperature, hunger, and acid levels are four things used to maintain homeostasis in the human body. Homeostasis is an important part of understanding how the body functions both when it's sick and when it's well.

What does the circulatory system do?

Much like its name suggests, the circulatory system is used to circulate nutrients and oxygen through the body. It also removes waste products such as carbon dioxide. The system is made up of the heart, arteries, capillaries, and veins. It moves oxygen, gases, hormones, and nutrients with the heart as the pump for it all.

Arteries carry blood away from the heart and veins move blood back to it. While it's circulating, it delivers the substances needed for repair, growth, and energy.

What do enzymes do?

Enzymes are proteins that are essential for things like blood clotting, growth, and digestion. There are thousands of different types of enzymes in the body, and each has its own role. Enzymes "connect" to certain molecules at the cellular level and lessen the amount of energy needed to perform a reaction.

Some examples of enzymes include helicase, amylase, lipase, maltase, trypsin, and lactase. The body requires each type to function correctly.

What does the nucleus of a cell do?

RNA processing, DNA replication, and transcription all occur within the nucleus of a cell, and it functions as a control center. The nucleus stores and manages all genetic materials. Its membrane-bound structure protects the integrity of genes within the cell. It regulates things like metabolism and growth and houses the cell's genome.

What is an allele?

A person gets two different alleles, one from each parent, to create DNA. This determines the person's characteristics like blood type, hair color, and eye color. Alleles can be dominant or recessive. They can also influence things like allergies, reactions to medication, and certain diseases.

One example of how alleles work is in someone who received one allele for blue eyes from mom and one for brown from dad. This doesn't mean they will have one blue eye and one brown eye. There are three gene pairs associated with eye color, and the outcome is decided through a complex process of pairing recessive and dominant alleles.

What is DNA?

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, stores all genetic information for a cell. It's known as the building blocks of human life and contains all instructions necessary for functioning and development. It's essentially a blueprint for the body to follow and pass traits down through generations. DNA is unique to every individual.

While in utero, each organism begins to replicate cells to create a unique being. Each cell contains DNA, and replication errors can lead to things like cancer, developmental abnormalities, or genomic instability.

What is mitosis?

When a cell replicates the chromosomes and splits them into two different nuclei before cell division, the process is called mitosis. After mitosis, the cell usually divides into two daughter cells with identical genomes.

There are four stages of mitosis: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Mitosis is an important part of creating new cells that pass down genetic traits at the core of every cell, the nuclei.

What is cellular respiration?

Cellular respiration is how cells make energy for some biological functions by breaking down glucose near oxygen. The cells turn those substances into carbon dioxide, ATP, and water. It occurs in three steps and is aerobic (with oxygen) and anaerobic (without oxygen). There are three stages to cellular respiration, but they're much more complex than the basic question, so it's no surprise most Americans don't know them. They are glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and the electron transport chain.

What is biodiversity?

Biodiversity is having a diverse variety of species on Earth. This includes not only the number of species but also their genetic variation and how they react within their individual ecosystem. Biodiversity provides economic growth, a stable climate, medicine, food, crop pollination, good quality soil, fresh water, and clean air.

There are many things that threaten biodiversity on our planet. Some examples are invasive alien species, pollution, climate change, direct exploitation, and changes in land use.

What do chloroplasts do?

Chloroplasts help plants with photosynthesis, or the process by which they make food. They are green in color and mostly found in the leaves because they have access to more sunlight. They perform photosynthesis during the day and turn light energy into semi-stable chemical energy. They are vital to the process of plants making food.

What is meiosis?

Meiosis occurs in two parts and reduces the number of chromosomes in gametes in sexually reproducing organisms. Simply put, one cell divides twice during meiosis to form four daughter cells. Each daughter cell contains half the number of the parent cell's chromosomes.

What holds DNA together?

DNA molecules are made of a double helix formed by nucleotides and then held together by hydrogen bonds. Cytosine pairs with guanine and adenine pairs with thymine.

What are hormones?

You may have heard of hormones like thyroid hormone, estrogen, insulin, testosterone, or progesterone. These are chemical messengers that control what organs and cells do as they travel through the bloodstream. Problems with hormones can lead to things like fertility problems, thyroid problems, and diabetes.

What is an organism that can make its own food?

Autotrophs are organisms that can make their own food, while heterotrophs must consume other organisms for food. Most plants are autotrophs because they make their own food through photosynthesis with only water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide. Autotrophs are most often the producers at the beginning of a food chain.

What is an ecosystem?

An ecosystem is a broad term for a community of organisms like microbes, animals, and plants that live together and interact with each other. They all rely on the same things like temperature, sunlight, soil, and water. Simply put, an ecosystem is a bubble where all living things rely on their surroundings and each other to survive.