Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the evolutionary history of prokaryotesDiscuss the distinguishing features of extremophilesExplain why it is difficult to culture prokaryotes

By studying key processes in the carbon cycle, such as photosynthesis, composting and anaerobic digestion, students learn how nature and engineers "biorecycle" carbon. Students are exposed to examples of how microbes play many roles in various systems to recycle organic materials and also learn how the carbon cycle can be used to make or release energy.

In a multi-week experiment, student teams gather biogas data from the mini-anaerobic digesters that they build to break down different types of food waste with microbes. Using plastic soda bottles for the mini-anaerobic digesters and gas measurement devices, they compare methane gas production from decomposing hot dogs, diced vs. whole. They monitor and measure the gas production, then graph and analyze the collected data. Students learn how anaerobic digestion can be used to biorecycle waste (food, poop or yard waste) into valuable resources (nutrients, biogas, energy).

Not all exercise is the same, but all exercise can help you grow strong and keep you healthy. Exercise can also help you with your homework and that science project due at the end of the year.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"In recent years, the study of microbial communities has greatly benefitted from advances in both genetic sequencing and more traditional culture-based approaches, unlocking their potential to drive the development of new medical treatments like never before, but the techniques used for sample preservation could affect which microbes are ultimately cultured and thus constrain the discovery of previously undescribed species and microbial functions. To better understand how preservation affects the study of anaerobic bacteria in the gut, researchers froze human fecal samples at -80°C after adding Cary-Blair medium with or without 20% glycerol or 5% dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to some of them. These preservatives are often used when transporting and freezing fecal and other clinical specimens. They found that the preservation conditions affected the number of bacterial anaerobes cultured from the samples, as well as the recovery of particular genera..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.