1. Why is Homo maledi important and what are the ancestral relationships within the Tribe Hominini?

2. What are the distinguishing characteristics of the Eukaryotes, Archaea and Bacteria?

3. What is the difference between a prokaryote and a eukaryote?

4. What is a plasmid and why are they important for genetic engineering?

5. What is the difference between gram negative and a gram positive bacteria?

6. Can you describe binary fission?

7. What is the human microbiome? What are probiotics? How are the two related?

8. Can you contrast how photoautotrophs and chemoautotrophs obtain nutrition? What is a chemoautotroph?

9. What is endosymbiosis and can you give a couple examples?

10. Is there a difference between parasitic and pathogenic bacteria?

11. Can you distinguish among mutualism, commensalism and parasitism?

12. If you were a saprophyte, what would you eat, and how would you go about it?

13. What are the basic differences between aerobic and anaerobic respiration? Can you give examples?

14. What is methanogenesis, and what prokaryotes do it?

15. What is biological nitrogen fixation?

16. Before the vaccine was changed, what caused some illnesses associated with the DTP vaccine?

17. By what mechanism does bacterial meningitis affect a human?

18. What is insulin and what does it do for humans? Can you differentiate between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes?

19. Why were the Archaea originally called "extremeophiles"?

20. In general terms, how did most of the metal ore deposits that humans mine originate?

21. Why are chemoautotrophic Archaea associated with black smokers along the mid-Atlantic Ridge? Why are they ecologically important in these places?

22. Describe how ruminants are mutualistic with methanogenic Archaea? Why is this relationship important for global ecology?

23. What is the difference between glucose and cellulose? Why and how is it important for animals to convert cellulose to glucose?

24. How can Archaea be important in waste water treatment and what are the important byproducts of aerobic versus anaerobic waste water treatment?

25. What are some characteristics of viruses and why do some scientists not think they should be considered living creatures?

26. How do vaccines function?

27. There were two philosophies in development of the polio vaccine. What were they?

28. What is the false connection between polio vaccine development and HIV?

29. Can you describe how viruses reproduce? How does this differ for retroviruses?

30. Viral infection of cells can follow either a lytic or lysogenic pathway. What are these?

31. Viruses can be sneaky. How do many get past plant cell defenses?

32. Can you explain how viruses interact with a host cell's DNA? Use the cucumber mosaic virus as an example. How can this particular virus be alleviated via genetic engineering?

33. What is the difference between virus genera A and B?

34. What are Haemagglutinin (H) and Neuraminidase (N) and why are they important for virus reproduction, virus identification, and for vaccine effectiveness?

35. Do you know the difference between antigens and antibodies?

36. Why do different viral diseases and different prion diseases affect different parts of the body or different parts of the brain?

37. Can you distinguish between and describe antigenic drift and antigenic shift?

38. Why do you need a new flu shot every year?

39. What is a pandemic?

40. Why is the flu vaccine a trivalent formulation?

41. What is a zoonotic pathogen? Why can the Ebola virus be described as one?

42. What is the difference between a retrovirus and a lentivirus? Can a virus be both?

43. What is reverse transcriptase and what does it do?

44. Where did HIV come from?

45. Why might a SIV chimpanzee in Southern Cameroon test positive to a human HIV test?

46. What type of cell does HIV attack? Why is HIV called an immunodeficiency virus?

47. How long can the latent period for HIV last? What is the pattern of human T cells over the course of HIV infection becoming AIDS?

48. When a person is treated with antiviral drugs for AIDS, how do the drugs work?

49. Why do proteins "fold" after they are produced?

50. What is a prion? Can you name a couple of prion diseases?

51. What is homeostasis, and why is it important for human functioning?

52. How are the different human body systems integrated?

53. What is a negative feedback system? What are some human examples and how do they work?

54. What humans systems are involved with Ca regulation? Regulation of pH?

55. What are the different functions of osteoblasts and osteoclasts?

56. How do drugs for alleviating osteoporosis work?

57. Can you describe the evolutionary advances in the circulatory system from insects to humans? What is gained from these advances?

58. Why is "surface area" so important in the respiratory and digestive systems, and also in cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts?

59. Why could one consider digestion and decomposition to be similar processes?

60. What is BMI?

61. What are macrophages, natural killer cells, B cells, memory cells and T cells?

62. Can you describe the innate immune system?

63. What is adaptive immunity and how does it work?

64. Why are immunosuppressive drugs often used during tissue/organ transplants?

65. When you were a child you often received a vaccination and later a booster of the same vaccination. What does that do?

66. What are allergies and what happens when you are exposed to an allergen that you are sensitive to?

67. What is anaphylaxis?

68. What is an autoimmune disease?

69. What does natural selection have to do with aging?

70. What is the genetic hypothesis of aging? What is the DNA damage hypothesis?