Biology Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Spermology is the study of seeds, from the Greek sperma.

It covers seed structure, dormancy, germination and storage - the basis of seed technology and of gene banks.

Answer: C

The oath taken by medical graduates comes from Hippocrates.

The Hippocratic Oath binds the physician to act for the patient's benefit, to do no harm and to keep confidence. Modern graduates usually take a revised version, such as the Declaration of Geneva.

Answer: A

The placenta is not a part of blood - it is an organ formed in pregnancy from foetal and uterine tissue.

Blood consists of plasma with red cells, white cells and platelets suspended in it.

Answer: D

Plants growing on sand are psammophytes, from the Greek psammos, sand.

They cope with a shifting, dry, nutrient-poor substrate with long spreading roots and the ability to be buried and grow through. Lithophytes grow on rock, chasmophytes in crevices, and oxylophytes on acid soil.

Answer: A

The study of flowers is anthology, from the Greek anthos, flower.

The word's ordinary sense - a collection of poems - comes from the same root, a gathering of flowers. Palynology is the study of pollen and phenology of seasonal timing.

Answer: A

Agar-agar is prepared from red algae, chiefly Gelidium and Gracilaria.

It is a gel-forming polysaccharide from the cell wall, and it is the standard solidifying agent for microbiological culture media because almost no bacterium can digest it.

Answer: C

Mendel worked on the garden pea, Pisum sativum.

It suited him because it is normally self-pollinating but can be crossed by hand, grows quickly, and has clear either-or characters - tall or short, round or wrinkled, green or yellow - with no intermediates.

Answer: A

A codon is three nucleotides.

Three bases give \( 4^3 = 64 \) combinations for twenty amino acids and a stop signal, so the code is degenerate - most amino acids have more than one codon. Two bases would give only sixteen, too few.

Answer: C

Darwin observed the finches and giant tortoises on the Galápagos Islands, in 1835.

Each island had its own form, differing in beak or shell, which suggested that one ancestral stock had diverged as it adapted to different conditions. The observation was central to his thinking about the origin of species.

Answer: C

About 7 weeks are needed to replace the body's reserve of red corpuscles after giving a pint of blood.

The plasma volume is restored within a day or two, and the red cell count within a few weeks, but the iron stores that back it up take considerably longer - which is why donors are asked to wait about three months.