The following is a scenerio given by my professor. The bolded questions/instructions are what she wanted us to respond to with short answers using the scenerio provided. This is all she provided me with and nothing more except for a larger second portion (which also confused me a great deal).
You are part of research team that travels to a small island, Isla Naturale, to study various organisms on the island. When you get there you and a couple of colleagues decide to survey areas that seem to have very little organisms present like the beach and near the lava rocks. You notice that you can see a few lizards running around, they are nearly identical in every way except for their color. One lizard is light brown with white spots found mostly at the edge of the coast and the other is a gray color with black spots found to nest under lava rocks. You would like to test if they are separate species or if they interact with one another. Using the scientific method (question, research, hypothesis, experiment, analysis, and conclusion), design an experiment you could do to answer your question.
You travel back to Isla Naturale to study microbial organisms in a cave that one of your colleagues discovered a couple of months ago. Colleagues have found an underground spring inside the cave and decide to collect and bring back samples of water, rock, and soil. Once you examine the specimens closely you find the microbes present in the soil near the spring. The whole lab celebrates because it is a newly discovered organism and label it ISNAT01.
You are all excited to have potentially found a new life form. You find out that that ISNAT01 requires a high concentration of the ionic compound sodium chloride (NaCl) to live. Since no other organisms were found in the spring, the water must contain high amounts of sodium chloride. You test the pH of the water, the pH meter reads 10.12.
You are curious to know how this new organism, ISNAT01, thrives in this environment. You then test to see what types of elements and compounds that this microbe could possibly feed off of and what types of molecules it can make to within stand this extreme environment. If ISNAT01 cell membrane is composed of glycerol and fatty acids and high amounts of cysteine, what can you hypothesize about the microbe?
You then isolate an Enzyme ABC for ISNAT01. At the pH of the water in the cave spring, Enzyme ABC is found to be involved with assembling the cell membrane of ISNAT01. Which type of biological macromolecule is most likely involved? Draw a line graph showing how the concentration of Enzyme ABC affects the rate of cell membrane assembly at optimal pH. On the same graph, draw a second graph showing how the concentration of Enzyme ABC affects the rate of cell assembly if the pH of the water in the cave spring were to change from 10.12 to 5.5.
