***AP Biology Thread 2015-2016***

@gradeobsessed wait but is it Rt if my explanation was that the Edna stays in ONE SPOT longer

Its also the fact that the long strand DNA has less chance of being false match. Since no eDNA was found near the entrances to lake michigan the sample was a false positive

@Lebronjamesisbad i mean as long as you explained it in a way that made sense it should be fine

looking over grading rubrics for old tests, it seems like they accept a large variety of answers as long as you understand what you’re saying and explain it well

You guys are probably right about it being more representative (and the lack of mutations). I was trying to think of some way to associate the longer strand with being around for a shorter amount of time but I just couldn’t connect the dots. Anyway, your answers sound reasonable.

also for the prolactin one, i put increase in release after exercise but i don’t think collegeboard would make a question that simple
on previous tests, i remember having to use the SEM in the answer, but i didn’t understand how to do them because my teacher never taught it to us

I said something along the lines of different species are less likely to have similar DNA strand sequences if the fragments are longer, so it’d be easier to find the silver carp eDNA.

If u state that the SEM decreases this shows that the variation decreased and that nearly all levels went up after exercise

I just talked about how the SEM didn’t really overlap so there was an increase

@gradeobsessed but we may not have had to talk about them

For the eDNA one
I put that the longer strand was more specific to the silver carp. Shorter strands of DNA may be shared by other organisms. Also for the reasoning for the false positive I listed 3 things: no eDNA found near mouth of river, may have been a different organism’s DNA (could’ve been shared), and that the river carried the eDNA down the river to Lake Michigan.

Yeah I also put it gives more information about the specific silver carp for the eDNA question but I’m pretty sure if you put it is easier to perform PCR reaction on that might be incorrect because Barron’s says that it is easier to replicate of the strand is shorter

Well yea the shorter the DNA strand the less nucleotides that the Taq polyermase has to add to build a new strand so a larger DNA strand would be harder to PCR. The larger the eDNA the more accurate it can be compared to the DNA of an actual silver carp. I think the question had to do with tandem repetitive dna sequencing.

I am figuring out whether I want to self-study AP Bio next year (my senior year). I’ve taken AP Chem and AP Phyiscs (I"m not sure if that helps with this course at all, maybe the chem?) and I’d like to do Bio next year since it’ll be my senior year and I want to do pre med in college. I took honors biology as a freshman, but I’m sure we didn’t go into much depth on the topics. Do you guys have suggestions on things I should do to prepare and what prep books I should get?

The most updated Cliffnote’s book, learnerator, and Crash Course/Bozeman videos are a HUGE help. You’ll also obviously want to get the mastering biology textbook, or pay to have membership to access the online textbook.

Really use that cliffnote’s book to your advantage, because I’ll admit that I was very lazy with it. But if I somehow manage to get a 4 on this exam that I just took, I’ll literally owe 70% of my thanks to the few times I utilized that book. @swim1128

learnerator is a website, by the way. Oh, and course notes (another website) is also very helpful.

The most complicated topics are Meiosis/Mitosis, Cell communication, signal transduction, Immune Response, Photosynthesis, and Cellular Respiration so make sure you watch the videos for those

@teiluuuj thanks!

This year I went to Barnes and Noble and skimmed all the practice questions (because I’m cheap lol) and they were NOTHING like any of the questions from the previous year. The content covered was pretty sufficient for the MC but I think the FRQ requires a bit more detail.
So basically all the review books are bad if you’re using them for practice. Fortunately, my teacher gave us several practice tests using old questions and I felt like that prepared me very well.

Yeah I just said long eDNA lasts for a shorter period of time so it is more likely to be near to site the carp were most recently at

What did you guys get for “Identify the direct source of energy used for plant growth in the first week of May”? It was FRQ #3

Water. Um I forgot the structure of the seed but if you said something about the structure that gives the seed nutrients after getting germinated, you can get the point