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Table of Contents

UNIT 1 What Is Life Made Of? Chemistry, Cells, Energy

Chapter 1

Process of Science

Java Report

Making sense of the latest buzz in health-related news

Mission to Mars

Prospecting for life on the red planet

Wonder Drug

How a chance discovery in a London laboratory revolutionized medicine

Scientific Rebel

Lynn Margulis and the theory of endosymbiosis

The Peanut Butter Project

One doctor’s crusade to end malnutrition in Africa, one spoonful at a time

The Future of Fuel?

Scientists seek to make algae into the next alternative energy source

Chapter 6

New Story! The Sitting Disease

Understanding the causes and consequences of obesity

Biologically Unique

How DNA helped free an innocent man

The Model Makers

Watson, Crick, and the structure of DNA

New Story! Bulletproof

Scientists hope to spin spider silk into the next indestructible super-fiber

Sequence Sprint

Venter and Collins race to decode the human genome

Grow Your Own

Is regenerative medicine the solution to organ transplantation?

Fighting Fate

When cancer runs in the family, ordinary measures are not enough

Catching Breath

One woman’s mission to outrun a genetic disease

Mendel’s Garden

An Austrian monk lays the foundation for modern genetics

Q&A Genetics

Complexities of human genetics, from sex to depression

Bugs that Resist Drugs

Drug-resistant bacteria are on the rise. Can we stop them?

Adventures in Evolution

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace on the trail of natural selection

Urban Evolution

How cities are altering the fate of species

A Fish With Fingers?

A transitional fossil fills a gap in our knowledge of evolution

Q&A Evolution

From moon rocks to DNA, clues to the history of life on Earth

Lost City

Exploring life’s origins at the bottom of the sea

Eukaryotic Diversity

New Story! Can Rubber Save the Rainforest?

A small state in Brazil aims to find out.

New! Shaking the Tree

A revised view of eukaryotic diversity may be the key to tackling deadly diseases

Skin Deep

Science redefines the meaning of racial categories

On the Tracks of Wolves and Moose

Ecologists learn big lessons from a small island

What’s Happening to Honey Bees?

A mysterious ailment threatens a vital link in the food chain

The Heat Is On

From migrating maples to shrinking sea ice, signs of a warming planet

Progress or Poison?

Rachel Carson, pesticides, and the birth of the environmental movement

The Makings of a Green City

One Kansas town reinvents itself sustainable

New Story! Plants 2.0

Is genetic engineering the solution to world hunger?

Q&A Plants

Exploding seeds, carnivorous flowers, and other colorful adaptations of the plant world

Authors

Michele Shuster

Michèle Shuster, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the biology department at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning and teaches introductory biology, microbiology, and cancer biology classes at the undergraduate level, as well as working on several K–12 science education programs. Michèle is involved in mentoring graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in effective teaching, preparing the next generation of undergraduate educators. She is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the Westhafer Award for Teaching Excellence at NMSU. Michèle received her Ph.D. from the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University School of Medicine, where she studied meiotic chromosome segregation in yeast.

Janet Vigna

Janet Vigna, Ph.D., is a professor in the biology department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She is a science education specialist in the Integrated Science Program, training and mentoring K–12 science teachers. Janet has 18 years of undergraduate teaching experience, with a special interest in teaching biology effectively to nonmajors. She has recently been recognized with the GVSU Outstanding Teacher Award. Her scholarly interests include biology curriculum development, the effective use of digital media in science education, and research on the effects of biological pesticides on amphibian communities. She received her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Iowa.

Matthew Tontonoz

Matthew Tontonoz is a science writer and independent scholar living in Brooklyn, New York. For ten years, he was a development editor for textbooks in biology before shifting his focus to writing. He is currently senior science writer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he covers advances in basic science and clinical cancer research. Matt received his B.A. in biology from Wesleyan University and his M.A. in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania.

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