Course · Biology
Biology.
Life from the single cell up: genes, evolution, the body, disease, plants and ecology, to high-school level.
The course, unit by unit
Units
14 units · 71 lessons · about 28 hours
Jump to a unit 14
The cell and its chemistry
4 units · 19 lessons
Unit 1 · 7 lessons
Cells and life
What makes something alive: the cell and what is inside it, plant, animal and bacterial cells, and life in a drop of pond water.
Unit 2 · 4 lessons
The molecules of life
Carbohydrates, fats, proteins and nucleic acids, how a protein folds, and why an enzyme needs the right temperature and pH.
Unit 3 · 4 lessons
Transport in cells
How substances cross a cell's edge: diffusion, osmosis, active transport, and why surface area limits the size of cells.
Unit 4 · 4 lessons
Energy in living things
Photosynthesis, which builds sugar from air, water and light, and respiration, which stores its energy in ATP.
Genes and evolution
4 units · 18 lessons
Unit 5 · 4 lessons
DNA and proteins
How four letters keep instructions: the double helix, transcription and translation, mutations, and how CRISPR edits a gene.
Unit 6 · 5 lessons
Cell division
How one cell becomes two: the cell cycle, mitosis and meiosis, stem cells, and cancer, when division loses its controls.
Unit 7 · 4 lessons
Inheritance
How traits pass to offspring: dominant and recessive alleles, the Punnett square, chance, and genes on the X chromosome.
Unit 8 · 5 lessons
Evolution
How populations change over generations: natural selection, antibiotic resistance, fossils, and sorting life by ancestry.
The human body
3 units · 16 lessons
Unit 9 · 5 lessons
Body systems
How the body takes things in, shares them out and moves: the gut, the lungs, the heart's two loops, and muscles as levers.
Unit 10 · 7 lessons
Control and coordination
How the body senses and answers: nerves, a thermostat near 37 degrees, hormones, the eye and the ear, and the brain.
Unit 11 · 4 lessons
Disease and immunity
Pathogens and the body's defence: viruses, why antibiotics miss them, the immune response, vaccines, and epidemics.
Plants, animals and ecosystems
3 units · 18 lessons
Unit 12 · 5 lessons
Plants
How a tree lifts water, how a seedling finds the light and tells up from down, and how a flower becomes a fruit.
Unit 13 · 8 lessons
Ecology
Food chains and their energy, predators and prey, the carbon and nitrogen cycles, biomes, and the microbes in our gut.
Unit 14 · 5 lessons
How animals live
Whole animals in the world: how they raise young, change body, eat, move and flock, and what each costs in energy.