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:Describe how signaling pathways direct protein expression, cellular metabolism, and cell growthIdentify the function of PKC in signal transduction pathwaysRecognize the role of apoptosis in the development and maintenance of a healthy organism

Fundamentals of Biology focuses on the basic principles of biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and recombinant DNA. These principles are necessary to understanding the basic mechanisms of life and anchor the biological knowledge that is required to understand many of the challenges in everyday life, from human health and disease to loss of biodiversity and environmental quality.
Course Format

This course has been designed for independent study. It consists of four units, one for each topic. The units can be used individually or in combination. The materials for each unit include:

Lecture Videos by MIT faculty.
Learning activities, including Interactive Concept Quizzes, designed to reinforce main concepts from lectures.
Problem Sets you do on your own and check your answers against the Solutions when you're done.
Problem Solving Video help sessions taught by experienced MIT Teaching Assistants.
Lists of important Terms and Definitions.
Suggested Topics and Links for further study.
Exams with Solution Keys.

Content Development

Eric Lander
Robert Weinberg
Tyler Jacks
Hazel Sive
Graham Walker
Sallie Chisholm
Dr. Michelle Mischke

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:

"Like a symphony, the earliest moments of life play out with incredible precision. Take the fruit fly embryo. Unlike a human embryo, where a single cell becomes many through repeated rounds of cell division, the early embryo of the fruit fly starts as a single nucleus that then divides into thousands of nuclei, all within the same cell. During these divisions, the nuclei must navigate through the embryo to highly specific locations before they become separated into the thousands of cells that will eventually develop into an adult fly. A new report in Cell describes how these nuclei steer themselves to where they need to be. To uncover the mechanisms that drive nuclear positioning and cell cycle synchronization, the team developed state-of-the-art imaging and computational tools to manipulate and track cell cycle and cytoskeletal dynamics in early embryogenesis. Additionally, the team used optogenetic methods to manipulate cytoskeletal contractility with spatial and temporal accuracy..."

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