Essential Biology

UNIT-I
Biology & Its Branches; Scientific methods in Biology; Scope of biology and career options in Medical
Laboratory Sciences
UNIT-II
Structure and function of tissues – epithelial, connective, muscular and nervous
UNIT-III
Cell as a basic unit of life – discovery of cell, cell theory, cell as a self – contained unit; prokaryotic and
eukaryotic cell; unicellular and multicellular organisms; Ultrastructure of prokaryotic and eukaryotic
cell – cell wall, cell membrane – unit membrane concept (Fluid-Mosaic model); membrane transport;
cellular movement (exocytosis, endocytosis); cell organelles and their functions- nucleus,
mitochondria, plastids, endoplamasic reticulum, Gogli complex, lysosomes, microtubules, centriole,
vacuole, cytoskeleton, cilia and flagella, ribosomes
UNIT-IV
Molecules of cell; inorganic and organic materials – water, salt, mineral ions, carbohydrates, lipids,
amino acids, proteins, nucleotides, nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), Cell division: Binary fission, Cell
cycle: Mitosis, Meiosis
Unit V
Continuity of life – heredity, variation; mendel’s laws of inheritance, chromosomal basis of inheritance;
other patterns of inheritance – incomplete dominance, multiple allelism, quantitative inheritance.
Chromosomes – bacterial cell and eukaryotic cell; parallelism between genes and chromosomes;
genome, linkage and crossing over; gene mapping; recombination; DNA as a genetic material – its
structure and replication; structure of RNA and its role in protein synthesis.