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 epithelial tissuesDiscuss the different types of connective tissues in animalsDescribe three types of muscle tissuesDescribe nervous tissue

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:

"Our biological clock regulates everything from our body temperature to our eating habits. So much so that anything that throws it off beat could allow diseases to set in, including osteoarthritis. Muscle, bone, cartilage, and the tissue in between are reported to have regular rhythms that maintain joint health, and studies suggest that disturbances in the genes that regulate these rhythms could make symptoms of osteoarthritis worse. These disturbances affect the cells responsible for creating cartilage, increasing their breakdown while slowing their buildup. They lead to abnormal remodeling of bone tissue. They cause muscle fibers to age faster and become weaker. And they lead to inflammation in surrounding tissue, which aggravates joint pain and damage. Research that examines the relationship between rhythmic disturbances and osteoarthritis could lead to new ways of understanding joint degeneration and could inspire the development of new drugs that target the mechanisms underlying osteoarthritis..."

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:

"Insulin resistance and its progression to type 2 diabetes mellitus is an important public health concern. Both endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and reduced levels of the regulatory protein PGC-1α have been implicated in insulin resistance, but little is known about any interactions between them in this context. A recent study used cultured human skeletal muscle cells and mouse experiments to examine these potential interactions. In both cultured cells and mice, induced ER stress led to a decrease in PGC-1α and an increase in expression of ATF4, a transcription factor. To see if ATF4 was influencing PGC-1α expression, researchers increased ATF4 expression without ER stress, which also decreased PGC-1α expression, and reducing ATF4 before inducing ER stress blocked the drop in PGC-1α. ER stress activated mTOR, a major regulatory protein, and reduced levels of CRTC2, which is a transcription co-activator that increases PGC-1α transcription..."

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:

"Type 2 diabetes is one of the most common health problems, affecting over 450 million people worldwide. One major contributing factor is insulin resistance – a metabolic disorder causing elevated insulin, glucose, uric acid, and lipid levels in the blood. Skeletal muscle regulates glucose and lipid metabolism, making it an ideal target for new treatments for type 2 diabetes. A new study examined a potential regulator of lipid metabolism in skeletal muscle. LncRNA H19 belongs to a class of molecules called long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs), master regulators that affect cell functions without encoding proteins. The researchers found that H19 was typically downregulated in a mouse model of diabetes, db/db. Overexpressing H19 in these mice inhibited lipid deposits in skeletal muscle and inhibited insulin resistance. In skeletal muscle cells, H19 overexpression increased cellular respiration and blocked lipid accumulation, while silencing H19 had opposite effects..."

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

This lesson covers the topic of muscles. Students learn about the three different types of muscles in the human body and the effects of microgravity on muscles. Students also learn how astronauts need to exercise in order to lessen muscle atrophy in space. Students discover what types of equipment engineers design to help the astronauts exercise while in space.

This activity helps students learn about the three different types of muscles and how outer space affects astronauts' muscles. They will discover how important it is for astronauts to get adequate exercise both on Earth and in outer space. Also, through the design of their own microgravity exercise machine, students learn about the exercise machines that engineers design specifically for astronaut use.

Students are introduced to the field of biomechanics and how the muscular system produces human movement. They learn the importance of the muscular system in our daily lives, why it is important to be able to repair muscular system injuries and how engineering can help.

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:

"Does skeletal muscle have a memory? That’s the question researchers from the UK set out to answer in one of their most recent studies. Their finding: Yes, muscle memory is real. But it’s not quite the same type of memory you might be thinking of. This is memory of previous muscle growth—even after a period of muscle loss. The implications for athletes looking to bulk up is clear. But the results could also clue clinicians in on how to help patients retain muscle mass into older age. The researchers analyzed more than 850,000 sites on human DNA, discovering distinct patterns in how genes in these regions were chemically marked or unmarked during periods of exercise or no exercise. One cluster of genes lost its tags during muscle growth following exercise, kept them off after a period of no exercise, and lost even more during a second exercise period. Known as an epigenetic modification, this “untagging of DNA” is associated with switching gene expression on..."

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:

"Does skeletal muscle have a memory? That’s the question researchers from the UK set out to answer in one of their most recent studies. Their finding: Yes, muscle memory is real. But it’s not quite the same type of memory you might be thinking of. This is memory of previous muscle growth—even after a period of muscle loss. The implications for athletes looking to bulk up is clear. But the results could also clue clinicians in on how to help patients retain muscle mass into older age. The researchers analyzed more than 850,000 sites on human DNA, discovering distinct patterns in how genes in these regions were chemically marked or unmarked during periods of exercise or no exercise. One cluster of genes lost its tags during muscle growth following exercise, kept them off after a period of no exercise, and lost even more during a second exercise period. Known as an epigenetic modification, this “untagging of DNA” is associated with switching gene expression on..."

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

In this activity, students participate in a series of timed relay races using their skeletal muscles. The compare the movement of skeletal muscle and relate how engineers help astronauts exercise skeletal muscles in space.