Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Define genomicsDescribe genetic and physical mapsDescribe genomic mapping methods

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe three types of sequencingDefine whole-genome sequencing

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Cooling towers are home to unique ecosystems of microorganisms. While many are harmless, some are pathogenic. Cooling towers have been linked to many outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease, a severe pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria. A new study sought to identify microorganisms associated with cooling tower colonization by Legionella. Researchers identified complex ecological networks highlighting the importance of other bacteria and primary producers. For example, the presence of Brevundimonas bacteria was associated with higher levels of Legionella. Brevundimonas is prey for a Legionella host species, Tetrahymena. But Brevundimonas also directly stimulated the growth of Legionella in laboratory experiments. This study suggests that the Legionella host community is not the only factor that leads to Legionella outbreaks. Entire groups of microorganisms and their interactions play complex roles. Future work is needed to better understand these networks and how they vary over time..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, are photosynthetic bacteria that live in water and are important oxygen producers. Human-driven changes are a major factor causing seasonal cyanobacterial blooms, which can cause mass death of aquatic animals. Bacteria-infecting viruses, called phages, could potentially be used to control these outbreaks with minimal environmental disruption. But to date few freshwater ‘cyanophages’ have been isolated or had their genomes sequenced. Recently, researchers isolated a strain of cyanobacteria from Lake Chaohu, a massive lake in China with seasonal cyanobacterial blooms. Using the new cyanobacteria strain, they isolated five new freshwater cyanophages with varying tail structures from the same lake. While viruses can have RNA genomes or even single-stranded DNA genomes, all five isolated phages had double-stranded DNA genomes. Further analysis suggested that they all use different DNA packaging mechanisms and are evolutionarily distinct..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Within its first several months, the COVID-19 pandemic had already affected more than 33 million people and claimed more than 1 million lives. While vaccines are helping slow the spread of the disease. transmission rates in some areas remain high. And the rise of new viral mutations means continued vigilance is required. Unfortunately, current genome sequencing methods are lacking, with none managing to combine high precision, a simple workflow, and low cost in one tool. The recently developed Coronavirus Genomic Surveillance (CorvGenSurv) platform is designed to close that gap. CorvGenSurv amplifies viral RNA samples and sequences them in three segments via long-read, high-throughput sequencing. This design reduces sequencing data waste, thus preventing dropouts in genome coverage, and the long-read approach makes the sequencing workflow simpler than short-read sequencing..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Most genetic studies of Alzheimer’s disease compare patient DNA to controls to identify mutations that increase disease risk. That approach has identified some risk variants, but none have led to effective treatments, and most of the genetic contributors are still unknown. Now, a team of researchers is tackling the problem from the opposite side, asking why some high-risk elderly people don’t have Alzheimer’s – a strategy that has discovered a protective mutation in a gene that may be a good drug target. To find protective mutations for Alzheimer’s, the scientists first searched the Utah Population Database for families with above-average rates of Alzheimer's that also had at least four people who were resilient to the disease -- that is, they were cognitively normal, despite being 75 years old or older, and having the APOE e4 allele, which increases risk more than 5-fold per copy..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue is the gold standard for pathology tissue storage, making FFPE tissue libraries rich repositories for identifying and analyzing the bacterial microbiomes that stretch across the human body. Unfortunately, various facets of the FFPE process can compromise the integrity of tissue for this type of analysis. including DNA damage, susceptibility to contamination, and the lack of suitable DNA extraction methods. A new study proposes a system called Protoblock for standardizing and optimizing FFPE tissue-based research. A Protoblock is generated by embedding a known number of fixed cells in a molded agar matrix. After the agar solidifies, the block is processed following routine FFPE protocols and verified by microscopy. Experiments confirmed the quality and condition of DNA purified from Protoblocks, revealing important calibration information, such as how DNA damage evolves over fixation time. and how host DNA and sample prep method might bias bacterial analysis..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Interactions among probiotics, resident gut microbes and host factors affect probiotic engraftment and the resulting therapeutic effects. These interactions depend on gut-adaptive evolution of the probiotic strains, but the underlying processes—and their differences among host species—are unclear. In addition, the evolutionary effects of probiotics on native gut microbes are not well characterized. A recent genomics study examined the evolution and effects of the probiotic Lactiplantibacillus plantarum HNU082 (Lp082) in the human, mouse, and zebrafish gut. In all three species, Lp082 acquired single-nucleotide mutations. In vitro, the gut-adapted strains exhibited improved fitness related to carbohydrate utilization and acid tolerance and remained genetically stable for three months. In the human and mouse gut, Lp082 engraftment increased the numbers of mutations of the resident gut microbiota (GM) by 10- to 70-fold..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.