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 four types of signaling found in multicellular organismsCompare internal receptors with cell-surface receptorsRecognize the relationship between a ligand’s structure and its mechanism of action

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the extracellular matrixList examples of the ways that plant cells and animal cells communicate with adjacent cellsSummarize the roles of tight junctions, desmosomes, gap junctions, and plasmodesmata

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:

"Chronic kidney disease is a growing health crisis currently affecting about 10% of the global population. Recent studies have linked certain forms of this disease to proteins called connexins. Connexins create portals between cells to facilitate communication and signaling. When connexins fail, signaling molecules normally shuttled between cells spill into the local surroundings. That spillage sets off a chain of events that can ultimately lead to kidney failure. Worse yet, studies suggest that some connexins, such as Cx43, can actually aggravate the leak. In search of a possible fix, researchers examined what happens when Cx43 is blocked with a similar protein called Peptide 5. Test-tube experiments showed that Peptide 5 improved human kidney cells exhibiting signs of disease, reducing the molecular “leakiness” of those cells caused by Cx43, and restoring their function to some degree..."

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

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:

"Cell death is a hallmark of various abnormalities of the heart, including heart failure, heart attack, and ischemia. While the long-term effects of cell death in the heart have been described, the cellular processes that occur immediately after cell death remain poorly understood. Now, by tracking the movement of calcium ions, researchers are gaining a better idea of what happens right after individual heart cells die. Calcium ions regulate vital cell functions in mammals and therefore serve as a valuable signal of cellular activity and intercell connections. When zapping and killing a single heart muscle cell with a laser, researchers found that different types of surrounding cells responded differently. Nearby myocytes showed a slow and sustained uptick in calcium “sparks,” while distant myocytes were weakly or not affected. This activity was accompanied by mechanical damage in myocytes. Fibroblasts, however, showed rapid shock waves of calcium ion activity..."

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