Virginia Standards of Learning End-of-Course Biology

1.Three claims are posted in a Norfolk classroom: every living thing is made of one or more cells, the cell is the basic unit of life, and new cells come from cells that already exist. Which idea do those claims state?

2.A student in Charlottesville compares a flowering dogwood leaf cell with a cell from the inside of a cheek. Which structure is part of the leaf cell but not the cheek cell?

3.Muscle cells work hard during a track meet in Blacksburg. Which organelle is the main site where those cells release usable energy from food molecules?

4.Needles on a loblolly pine near Suffolk stay green because an organelle in those cells captures light. Which organelle does that?

5.A cell from mud beside the James River in Richmond has no membrane-bound nucleus. Which description fits that cell?

6.In a red maple cell in Waynesboro, amino acids are joined to make a protein. Which structure carries out that assembly?

7.What is the main job of the plasma membrane in a cell from a northern cardinal?

8.In a eukaryotic cell from a white oak in Shenandoah National Park, where is most of the cell's DNA found?

9.A tomato cell from a garden in Albemarle County has a large water-filled sac. The sac presses outward and helps the cell stay firm. Which structure is it?

10.Many animal cells break down worn-out parts. Which organelle holds the enzymes that do that breakdown?

11.Proteins that will leave a cell pass into a folded membrane network just after they are made. Which structure is that network?

12.Some proteins are modified and packed into small membrane sacs before they leave the cell. Which organelle does that packaging?

13.After a dry week, a gardener in Roanoke waters a wilted basil plant. Water crosses the root-cell membranes from the wet soil into the cells. What is that movement of water called?

14.Someone peels an orange in a Winchester classroom. Scent molecules spread from the crowded air near the peel toward the far side of the room. Which process is that spread?

15.A sycamore root cell at Scottsville moves mineral ions from the soil water, where they are scarce, into the cell, where they are already more concentrated. The cell spends energy. Which process is this?

16.A red blood cell is in fluid with a lower solute concentration than the cell's cytoplasm. Water enters, and the cell swells. What is that surrounding fluid called?

17.Blood plasma has about the same solute concentration as the cytoplasm of the red blood cells it surrounds. The cells keep their shape, with no large net gain or loss of water. What is that plasma called, relative to the cells?

18.Salt spray from a winter road in Manassas reaches a roadside wildflower. Water leaves the plant cells, and each plasma membrane pulls inward from the cell wall. Relative to those cells, the salty water is which kind of solution?

19.A hiker on Old Rag keeps a near-steady body temperature while the mountain air turns cold. Which term names the maintenance of a stable internal condition?

20.The membrane of a bluegill cell in Smith Mountain Lake lets oxygen pass and blocks many larger molecules. Which phrase describes that membrane?

21.Salts from the rocks dissolve readily in a creek beside the Blue Ridge Parkway. Which property of water best accounts for that?

22.Water striders stay on the surface of a pond in Prince William Forest Park because water molecules at the surface cling to one another. Which property is that clinging?

23.Water rises in the narrow tubes of a sycamore in Richmond because water molecules are attracted to the tube walls. What is that attraction to a different substance called?

24.A student eats an apple after practice in Newport News. Sugars and starches in the apple are a ready energy supply. Which group of macromolecules includes those sugars and starches?

25.A black bear in the Allegheny highlands stores fat under the skin before winter. The phospholipids of cell membranes belong to the same chemical group as that fat. Which group is it?

26.Enzymes, hair, and muscle fibers are chains of amino acids. Which macromolecule are those chains?

27.Which macromolecule stores the hereditary information a cell can pass to the next generation?

28.A protein in a liver cell speeds a reaction and can act again after that reaction is finished. What role is the protein playing?

29.An enzyme fits one kind of molecule at its active site and acts on that molecule. What is the molecule called?

30.An enzyme is heated far above the temperature at which it normally works. Its shape changes, and the active site no longer fits the substrate. What has happened to the enzyme?

31.A digestive enzyme works quickly in very acidic conditions and much more slowly when the surroundings are near neutral. Which condition accounts for that change in activity?

32.Carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids from a Chesapeake oyster all contain which element in their molecular frameworks?

33.Eelgrass in a shallow Chesapeake bed takes in carbon dioxide and water where sunlight reaches the leaves. Which process uses those inputs to make sugar and release oxygen?

34.Which pair lists the main outputs of photosynthesis?

35.Sugar and oxygen enter the cells of a blue crab as it walks across a Chesapeake shoal. Which process uses those two inputs?

36.What are the main outputs when cells break down sugar in the presence of oxygen?

37.An American holly in Alexandria makes sugar while the sun is shining. Its living cells still need energy after dark. Which statement is accurate?

38.When a cell releases energy from sugar, part of the usable energy is held in a small molecule that then powers cell work. What is that energy carrier?

39.Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay filter large volumes of water, and their reefs give many other animals a place to live. What is a species whose presence strongly shapes the rest of its community called?

40.The daily rise and fall of salty water is a nonliving condition that plants in a Chesapeake marsh must tolerate. Which term names a nonliving part of an ecosystem?

41.A scraped knee heals on a student from Hampton as new skin cells form. The new cells have the same chromosome number as the original skin cells. Which process produced them?

42.In humans, which process produces gametes and cuts the chromosome number in half?

43.A human egg and a human sperm each carry 23 chromosomes. How many chromosomes does the zygote have right after fertilization?

44.After a farm field in the Piedmont is abandoned, grasses become common, then pines, and later hardwood trees. Soil is already present. What is this regrowth of the community called?

45.A eukaryotic cell copies its DNA before the nucleus divides. During which major part of the cell cycle does that copying happen?

46.In a leaf cell of a peanut plant in Southampton County, the nucleus has already divided. The cytoplasm is then divided so that two cells result. What is that division of the cytoplasm called?

47.A pollen nucleus from a redbud tree in Lexington carries one set of chromosomes. Which term describes that nucleus?

48.Clover in a Shenandoah Valley pasture has root bacteria that change nitrogen gas from the air into compounds the clover can absorb. What is that process called?

49.During meiosis, paired chromosomes can exchange pieces. What is the outcome of that exchange?

50.A bacterium in garden soil in Petersburg divides into two cells. What kind of reproduction is that?

51.Cells in a tissue keep dividing after the usual signals to stop, and a mass can form. Which description matches that outcome?

52.A fallen oak in a Piedmont woods is broken down, and carbon dioxide returns to the air. Nearby trees take carbon dioxide in while they make sugar. Which cycle includes both outcomes?

53.In a DNA double helix, which base pairs with adenine?

54.Blue catfish were introduced into the James River. They now live through much of the river and eat many native fishes. Which term fits a species that spreads in a new region and harms native communities?

55.Which base is found in RNA and is not a base in DNA?

56.A gene is a section of DNA in a cell of a dog living in Leesburg. What is the usual outcome of the information in a gene?

57.What is the main outcome of transcription?

58.What is the main outcome of translation?

59.A codon is three bases on messenger RNA. What does a codon usually specify during protein building?

60.One base in a gene inside a maple leaf cell in Front Royal changes. Which outcome can follow directly from that change?

61.In morning glories grown in a Portsmouth garden, one version of a flower-color gene leads to blue petals and another version leads to pale petals. What is each version of the gene called?

62.In a garden pea, T is a dominant allele for tall stems and t is recessive. A plant has the genotype Tt, and dominance is complete. Which phenotype is expected?

63.A rabbit has the genotype bb for one coat-color gene, so both alleles are the same. How is that genotype described?

64.A genotype written Aa has two different alleles of one gene. Which word names that genotype?

65.Two guinea pigs are each heterozygous Bb for one gene. In a Punnett square for Bb crossed with Bb, what fraction of the offspring is expected to have the genotype bb?

66.A student in Fairfax has brown eyes, which classmates can see. They cannot see the written pair of alleles. Which term names the observable form of a trait?

67.Red-green color vision deficiency is a recessive condition carried on the X chromosome. It appears more often in males, who have one X chromosome. Which inheritance pattern is this?

68.A person inherits one allele for blood marker A and one allele for blood marker B. Both markers appear on the red blood cells. Which pattern is that?

69.Red-flowered and white-flowered four-o'clocks produce offspring with pink flowers. Neither allele fully hides the other. Which pattern is that?

70.In a pedigree, an autosomal recessive condition appears in a child whose parents do not show it. For this gene, what are those parents?

71.Students in a Lynchburg class show many different heights, not two strict height groups. Several genes contribute to height. Which pattern fits?

72.Which item is a genotype rather than a phenotype?

73.In a cold creek in Giles County, brook trout with inherited traits that help them survive and reproduce leave more young than trout without those traits. Which process is this?

74.A wood frog near Wintergreen has inherited coloring that makes it harder for predators to see against fallen leaves. What is that inherited trait?

75.Selection changes which traits are common only when members of a population differ in ways their young can inherit. What must that population have?

76.Buried layers in Virginia's coastal plain hold fossils. Deeper layers contain forms that are missing from younger layers, and the younger layers hold different remains. What do these fossils provide?

77.The wing bones of a little brown bat in a western Virginia cave and the arm bones of a person share a similar layout, though one limb is used in flight and the other in handling tools. What are these limbs called?

78.A dragonfly over a pond at Caledon State Park and a great blue heron both fly. Their wings are built differently and do not come from one shared ancestral wing. What are these wings called?

79.Salamanders in two separated valleys of western Virginia no longer interbreed. After many generations the two groups are different species. Which outcome is that?

80.A virus has genetic material inside a protein coat, no cell membrane, and no ribosomes of its own. New particles of that virus are produced only inside a host cell. Which statement fits?

81.The scientific name of the white-tailed deer is Odocoileus virginianus. What do the two parts of that name indicate?

82.On a branching diagram, white oak and chestnut oak meet at a more recent branch point than either oak meets a loblolly pine. What does that more recent meeting point represent?

83.An eastern box turtle is multicellular, eats other organisms, and its cells have no cell walls. Which kingdom fits the turtle?

84.A shelf fungus on a log in the Great Dismal Swamp digests food outside its body and then absorbs the nutrients. It does not make its own food. Which kingdom fits?

85.Cordgrass in a Chesapeake marsh makes its own food. Which role does that plant fill in the marsh food web?

86.A blue crab in a Chesapeake tidal creek eats small clams and does not make its own food. Which role does the crab fill?

87.Bacteria in the mud of a Chesapeake marsh break down dead cordgrass and release simpler substances. Which role are those bacteria filling?

88.In a James River food chain, algae are eaten by small fish, and a largemouth bass eats those fish. About what share of the energy at one level is stored in the bodies of the next level?

89.A white-tailed deer in a Loudoun County meadow eats clover and leaves during this meal and is not eating meat. Which feeding label fits the deer?

90.Microbes in the gut of a termite in a Virginia pine woods help the termite break down wood. The microbes receive food and a place to live. Which relationship is this?

91.A tick on a white-tailed deer in Orange County takes a blood meal. The tick benefits, and the deer is harmed. Which relationship is that?

92.Rain on farms in the Shenandoah Valley can wash extra nutrients into streams that flow toward the Chesapeake Bay. Algae may then grow densely. After they die and are broken down, deep water can lose oxygen. Which statement matches that outcome?

93.Deer in a Fairfax woodland increase until food and space limit further growth, and the population then levels off. What is that upper population size called?

94.A summer drought in Page County dries the grass, and fewer grasshoppers survive there. What is the drought for that grasshopper population?

95.Two loblolly pines stand side by side in Isle of Wight County. Both draw water and light from the same small patch of ground. Which interaction is that?

96.An osprey over the Chesapeake Bay dives, catches a fish, and eats it. Which interaction is that?

97.Cardiac muscle is a tissue made of cells. The heart is built from tissues, and the heart works with the blood vessels as a larger unit. Which list goes from smallest to largest?

98.Which job belongs to the circulatory system of a runner on the Virginia Beach boardwalk?

99.In the lungs of a hiker in Grayson Highlands, oxygen enters the blood and carbon dioxide leaves the blood. Which system is the site of that gas exchange?

100.A peach eaten in Crozet is broken into smaller molecules, and those molecules pass into the blood. Which system accomplishes that breakdown and absorption?

101.A cyclist in Richmond sees a pothole and turns the wheel. Signals travel quickly from the eyes toward the brain and then toward the arm muscles. Which system carries those signals?

102.Chemical messengers travel in the blood and change what certain target cells do. Some of those messengers affect growth. Which system produces them?

103.After a student in Norfolk meets a virus, certain white blood cells respond, and antibodies that match that virus are produced. Which system does this work?

104.After a long practice in the heat in Danville, the body must remove urea and adjust how much water leaves in urine. Which organs are central to that job?

105.Which set of outcomes belongs to the skeletal system?

106.A rower at Belle Haven on the Potomac pulls the oars when skeletal muscles shorten and pull on bones. What is the main outcome of that muscle action?

107.Skin keeps many microbes out of the body and slows water loss from the body surface. Which system includes the skin in that role?

108.After a meal in Williamsburg, blood sugar rises. A hormone then helps move sugar into body cells, and the level falls back toward its usual range. Which kind of control is that?