Knowing one's self is not simply good psychological advice, it is vital to our ability to defend our bodies from foreign invaders such as disease causing agents. This "education" of our cells begins before we are born and enables us to protect our own bodies, while effectively fighting and ridding our bodies of foreign objects.
We will begin this assignment with a study of bacteria and viruses, some of the more common foreign objects that enter our bodies.
Our study will then turn to our own body's reactions to foreign invaders. We will learn how the body learns to distinguish self from non-self. Our study will include problems that can occur in the immune system such as allergies and auto-immune diseases. We will also examine specific diseases including AIDS and STIs (formerly known as STDs).
WEEK ONE (April 9)
PART II: EXPLORATIONS, UNIT 8 EXPLORING VERTEBRATES
Viruses and Bacteria
•20-1 Viruses (omit page 45) "In chapter one you learned about the properties of life. All living things are cellular, able to grow and reproduce, and are guided by information encoded in the nucleic acid DNA. The smallest organisms that have these properties are bacteria, single cells that were the earliest forms of life. Even smaller than bacteria are viruses, mere segments of nucleic acids wrapped in a protein coat. Because viruses depend on the cells of other living organisms in order to reproduce, biologists do not consider viruses to be alive. However, when they are able to reproduce, viruses often cause damage to the host organism. For this reason, viruses have had, and continue to have, a major impact on the living world."
**ANSWER: page 461 #1-5
•20-2 Bacteria (pages 462-465, rest optional) "Bacteria are the oldest, simplest, and most abundant form of life on Earth. In a single gram of soil, there may be 2.5 billion bacteria. It is not surprising that bacteria play a very important part in the web of life on Earth. They play a key role in recycling minerals within the Earth's ecosystems. In fact, photosynthetic bacteria were responsible in large measure for the introduction of oxygen into the Earth's atmosphere. Bacteria cause some of the most deadly diseases that cause injury to plants and animals, including humans. Our constant companions, bacteria are present in everything we eat and on everything we touch."
**EXPLAIN (check chapter 16) several ways in which bacteria
are important in food webs and recycling.
Name the three most common shapes of bacteria.
•20-3 Bacteria and Viruses as Pathogens "Bacteria are beneficial to humans in many ways. They recycle nutrients in ecosystems and play key roles in the manufacture of foods and drugs. However, bacteria have their most noticeable impact on humans as pathogens, agents of disease. At times, you may have blamed an illness on bacteria when in fact it was caused by a virus."
**ANSWER: page 471 #2 and 4
| EXPERIMENTAL: Pasteur Demo, Euglena, Bacterial Resistance |
WEEK TWO (April 16)
PART II EXPLORATIONS, UNIT 9 HUMAN BIOLOGY
The Body's Defenses and The Reproductive
System
•39-1 Defending Against Infection "When you think of how animals defend themselves, it is natural to think of armor, such as the hard shells of turtles, clams and armadillos. However, even armor would offer no protection against the most dangerous enemies that the human body faces: pathogenic bacteria, viruses, fungi , and protists. The world is filled with pathogens, and you could not live for long unprotected. You survive because your body has a variety of very effective defenses against this constant attack."
**ANSWER: page 924 #2-4
•39-2 The Immune System "Only occasionally do bacteria or viruses overwhelm your body's second line of defense. When this happens, the invaders face a third line of defense, the immune system, which is more difficult to evade than the first two lines of defense. Your immune system is not localized in any one place in the body, nor is it controlled by any one organ, such as the brain. Rather, it is an army of individual cells that rush to the site of an infection to combat invading microorganisms."
**ANSWER: page 928 #1-5
•39-3 Malfunctions and Failures of the Immune System. (optional) "Though the immune system is one of the most sophisticated systems of the human body, it is not perfect. Many of today's major diseases, and other health concerns, are the result of failures or malfunctions of the immune system."
**ANSWER: page 934 Multiple choice #1 and 4
page 935 # 18 and 19
•42-4 Sexually Transmitted Diseases "Disease-causing agents travel from one host to another in many ways. When certain disease-causing microbes are present in human body fluids, they can be passed from one person to another when these fluids are exchanged during sexual activity. Diseases that are spread by sexual contact are called sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs. Both viruses and bacteria can cause STDs."
**ANSWER: page 1009 #1-5
| EXPERIMENTAL: Slide sets of Bacteria and Viruses and Bacteria and Antibiotics, Blood typing, Discuss Epidemic (done in 7th grade) |
NOTE: All quotations are taken from Raven and Johnson