1. Introduction, Course Organization of MIT 7.016
Introductory Biology
I 'll take you through this sort of fast track through molecules to man, all the
way down to cells and organisms. Study biology in the 21st century is a fabulous
opportunity. No matter what discipline you come from, you can add to expertise
that will move biology forward. Biology would not be where it is today in the
absence of science , engineering to promote it and to support progress in
biology. So what we 'll try to give you is a view of the fundamental principles
that are common to all living organisms. So there 's a common molecular logic
of very complex processes. You learn the rules for the simplest organisms. You
look at the molecules and you see how form fulfills function , whi ch is something
I 'm really excited about.
There was a period of time known as the prebiotic world where there were not
living organisms that replicated. People believe that the building blocks of life
came together from things like hydrogen cyanide , or sulfide. The first
prokaryotes were cyanobacteria. They 're photosynthetic bacteria. It was quite a
long time before the first cells evolved. Evolution of homo sapiens can be
thought of as something that we can keep track of a bit through fossil records
over the last five million years. Eukaryotes evolved from unicellular organisms
that totally lacked a nucleus , lacked a lot of intracellular compartmentalization.
Then the humanoids gradually became different, evolved. In some cases there
were branches of the tree of evolution and dead ends. Human and neanderthal
diverged from the chimpanzee a certain time ago based on the molecular clock
that's available. The typical genome of a model bacterium has only five million
base pairs. Despite this huge breadth of sizes and huge differences in organisms,
the building blocks are the same.
The three-dimensional structure of double-stranded DNA was solved -- this is
this beautiful anti-parallel structure that you see here -- by Watson, Crick , and
Rosalind Franklin. Watson and Crick had no clue how the DNA could encode and
program the synthesis of a protein. Each human cell has 1. 8 meters of DNA in it.
Yet it fits into a cell that's 10 to 100 microns in diameter. Cells are different in
size. You'll learn how DNA in cells gets bundled up and wrapped around
proteins that neutralize the negative charges of the double stranded DNA with
positively charged proteins and enable packaging. Professor Martin: We 'll talk
about the importance in model organisms in discovering new bi ology. We can
also look at changes as cells divide and go through the cell cycle. One topic that
I 'll start on when I start lecturing either at the end of this month or beginning of
October is genetics.
Introductory Biology
I 'll take you through this sort of fast track through molecules to man, all the
way down to cells and organisms. Study biology in the 21st century is a fabulous
opportunity. No matter what discipline you come from, you can add to expertise
that will move biology forward. Biology would not be where it is today in the
absence of science , engineering to promote it and to support progress in
biology. So what we 'll try to give you is a view of the fundamental principles
that are common to all living organisms. So there 's a common molecular logic
of very complex processes. You learn the rules for the simplest organisms. You
look at the molecules and you see how form fulfills function , whi ch is something
I 'm really excited about.
There was a period of time known as the prebiotic world where there were not
living organisms that replicated. People believe that the building blocks of life
came together from things like hydrogen cyanide , or sulfide. The first
prokaryotes were cyanobacteria. They 're photosynthetic bacteria. It was quite a
long time before the first cells evolved. Evolution of homo sapiens can be
thought of as something that we can keep track of a bit through fossil records
over the last five million years. Eukaryotes evolved from unicellular organisms
that totally lacked a nucleus , lacked a lot of intracellular compartmentalization.
Then the humanoids gradually became different, evolved. In some cases there
were branches of the tree of evolution and dead ends. Human and neanderthal
diverged from the chimpanzee a certain time ago based on the molecular clock
that's available. The typical genome of a model bacterium has only five million
base pairs. Despite this huge breadth of sizes and huge differences in organisms,
the building blocks are the same.
The three-dimensional structure of double-stranded DNA was solved -- this is
this beautiful anti-parallel structure that you see here -- by Watson, Crick , and
Rosalind Franklin. Watson and Crick had no clue how the DNA could encode and
program the synthesis of a protein. Each human cell has 1. 8 meters of DNA in it.
Yet it fits into a cell that's 10 to 100 microns in diameter. Cells are different in
size. You'll learn how DNA in cells gets bundled up and wrapped around
proteins that neutralize the negative charges of the double stranded DNA with
positively charged proteins and enable packaging. Professor Martin: We 'll talk
about the importance in model organisms in discovering new bi ology. We can
also look at changes as cells divide and go through the cell cycle. One topic that
I 'll start on when I start lecturing either at the end of this month or beginning of
October is genetics.
