Power, Sex, Suicide

By Nick Lane

• Multicellular organisms are called eukaryotes, and each of their celss contains a nucleus. These are what humans and animals are made up of.
• More simple organisms, such as bacteria, are known as prokaryotes. They contain no nucleus.
• Cellular respiration - The act of breathing provides our cells with oxygen, which we use to burn glucose.
• Mitochondria produce power by pushing protons through membranes within a cell, which creates an electric charge. During cellular respiration, the membranes function like a dam and a reservoir of protons builds up, thus storing energy in the cell. Then, the stored-up protons can slowly be released to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), or what's known as the "energy currency of life". This process is called chemiosmotic coupling.
• Rats are used in research labs because their lifespan is a sped-up version of ours. Rat organs work at a faster pace: they breathe more quickly, their hearts beat faster - in essence, they metabolize more rapidly. They are also very similar to us.
• Apoptosis - programmed cell death, or cell suicide.
• Only female sex passes on organelles, which include mitochondria.
• Mitochondrial Eve or African Eve, laid the foundation for the Out of Africa theory, which supposes that all mordern human beings originated in Africa.
• Free radicals are molecules or atoms that have one, unpaired electron and are thus unstable.