AQA BIOL5 Biology Unit 5 Exam - 22nd June 2011

i talked about this too. SCORREE!

Couldn't agree more to be honest with you, thought i was good at biology before this. Probably goodbye Newcastle Dentistry for us then

gah! I can't stop thinking about that pupa question and how i royally messed it up, damn you time restrictions. Btw people who did cycles for the 25 mark essay, what breadth of knowledge did you add in?

I did the essay question for cycles, and it seems many people spoke about cycles but very few answered the question. Essentially it was 'discuss cycles in which a product from cycle A starts cycle B'.

I think you're wrong there :P From what I remember it was something like this: "cycles are a series of processes in which the product A is also the reactant for the cycle. Discuss cycles in biology." It was obviously worded differently, but that's the general idea. Hence the question just said discuss cycles and the first sentence was just extra info...

I did the essay question for cycles, and it seems many people spoke about cycles but very few answered the question. Essentially it was 'discuss cycles in which a product from cycle A starts cycle B'.

Ah yesh. Well I went down the A to B, B to C route. Digestion, absorption, respiration, homeostasis.

Then I realised I had nothing on plants, so I jammed in chemical fertiliser->leeching.

So if we look at what people have put:
Respiration - the products are reused in later stages or at the start
Nitrogen Cycle - nitrogen is reused
Carbon Cycle - carbon is reused
Cell Cycle - products from replication are used for further replication.. Counts as a cycle :]
menstrual cycle - Corpus Leuteum from FSH release stimulates another release and then a degeneration stops the chemical...
I think that counts
And finally photosynthesis. Light dependent replaces electrons lost in initial, carries NADPH to the light independent as well as ATP.


So what out of them aren't cycles?

I did the essay question for cycles, and it seems many people spoke about cycles but very few answered the question. Essentially it was 'discuss cycles in which a product from cycle A starts cycle B'.

Ah yesh. Well I went down the A to B, B to C route. Digestion, absorption, respiration, homeostasis.

Then I realised I had nothing on plants, so I jammed in chemical fertiliser->leeching.

They are all cycles

I hope by respiration you just mean kreb's. I guess you could link H20 made at the end to H20 in photolysis, but that's one damn big cycle.

I hope by respiration you just mean kreb's. I guess you could link H20 made at the end to H20 in photolysis, but that's one damn big cycle.

i think people are clutching at straws with some of these cycles. didn't the question define a cycle as something where the product of the cycle is the start of it?? some people's cycles seem a bit more linear than cyclic

Hey i'm reli worried I messed up my essay and wanted to know what people think - btw you can be brutally honest.

I chose the DNA and its uses in science and technology and talked about;

1) Classification and using DNA hybridisation to find how similar or different organisms are
2) Then talked about DNA fingerprinting and using polymerase chain reaction
3) then i talked about meiosis and how understanding how variation is important is used for conservation (okay i know this is a stretch).


and thats about it

i think people are clutching at straws with some of these cycles. didn't the question define a cycle as something where the product of the cycle is the start of it?? some people's cycles seem a bit more linear than cyclic

in vivo/in vitro cloning
genetic enggineering
restriction mapping
sequencing - sort of linked in protein synthesis, some genetic diseases etc talked quite a bit about diseases i think- sort of linked in siRNA too how that can be used to stop translation to cure diseases caused by dodgy genes
PCR
finger printing - paternity tests, forensics, selective breeding
GM crops - resistance, high yield
resistance- MRSA - mutations - CF - gene therapy
im not even sure how i linked some of the things to be honest but it made sense at the time
dunno why but...totipotency, switching on and off of genes - oncogenes
then said a bit about how some guys in america managed to take skin cells on mice, make it a stem cell then used it to cure the mice's sickle cell anemia
and also something about using algae as fuel

(the questions earlier on were horrible so i finished super early, hope i havent put too many irrelevant things )

i knew ther was something i was forgetting...the word hybridisation refused to come to my mind

ps- sorry if that was too brutal