Sheesh.  An hour ago, I could have done it.  Now, I must sleep or I will die of exhaustion.  Tomorrow I leave for North Carolina for three days, but I'll take my laptop.  If I can gank any free wireless, I'll give it a read.

the ploidy refers to the number of copies of the genetic material coding for the organism are present in a cell. We humans have diploid cells, meaing two copies, since we recieve one from the father and one from the mother.

In certain cells during development of an embryo, the genome can duplicate many times without cell division. The result is that the cell grows to enormous size and has over 1,000 copies of the genome inside it. Such cells are therefore polyploid cells.

A haploid cell has only one copy of the genome. Any organism that reproduces without sex, such as bacterial organisms, will all be haploid, since their genetic line is passed directly from one parent to one progeny.

The sex cells or gametes of sexually reprduding diploid cells will also be haploid. They will also only have one copy of the genome present inside them, because two of them need to come together to form a diploid cell. The process by which haploids can be produced from diploids is called meiosis.

Here is a simple example that may aid understanding. The common baker's yeast can undergo the yeast mating cycle. It is quite simple. Yeast are haploid organisms. However, there are two types called mating types, and these two can fuse, in a manner similar to sexual reproduction, therefore forming one fused diploid cell. These diploid cells cannot reproduce, however, starvation of the yeast can induce sporulation so that the diploid yeast undergo meiosis and four haploids are produced by a single diploid yeast. And then the cycle continues.

An organelle is a membrane bound body inside a cell. An organelle is to a cell what an organ is to a body. A vesicle is a specific type of organelle, a compartment which holds substances for transport around the cell. Cells have very extensive networks of transporting substances enclosed in vesicles, and such is called intracellular vesicular traffic.

Fucking tease.

I need more!

I hope that was the reaction you wanted.

Perhaps you could include a quick section on taxonomy explaining that it isn't just 'plants and animals' like the majority of students are taught in high school biology class. 

It definitely reads well. Although the "we'll discuss this later" parts are driving me insane. lol. 

Why here instead of 'Evolution of Life' forum? 

The "common features" is simply a subset of one of the "rules", the "rule" being that all life on Earth is made of cells. This is subheaded by a list of common features of all cells.

I've taken university courses in chemistry and physics, but I've never taken a biology course at the university level.

How much detail will this go into? 

A minor hijack, are prions considered to be alive?

Damn publishers putting out teasers.

Very cool, my degree was in Physics (with Space Tec) always regretted not doing more biology

One criticism  you use the term  'Eukaryotic' cells in rule 8 before defining what they are . You do this later but it confused me as I was trying to work out what I missed

Bacterial cells store all of their DNA as one very large molecule.  This is because they have relatively small genomes. The E Coli bacteria stores its entire genome, which consists of 600,000 base pairs, as one very large circular molecule with millions of atoms.

However, Eukaryotic cells have genomes far too large to be stored as single molecules, and the packaging of them into discrete chromosomes makes it easier to retrieve genetic material. That is to say, each of the chromosomes is a seperate molecule, which holds a section of the DNA.  In humans, we have 46 such chromosomes, or rather, 23 pairs. We must understand that one chromosome is an enormous single molecule. So while bacteria store their DNA as one single molecule, Eukaryotic cells store their DNA as several discrete molecules. The number of chromosomes that Eukaryotic cells have is quite diverse. Some have 4, others have 40. It is usually between 4 to 50. 

Part #3 is now out

Ah, I thought I was missing something. Parthenogenesis and budding. Now I have to find a picture of a hydra plant and that means I have to change the numerical labelling of every picture.

Ok... fourth read through!

In the bit you added regarding asexual reproduction:

"(although the large majority of animals reproduce asexually)"

Should be 'sexually' ?

Regarding meosis:

You say that (in diploid organisms) haploid cells are produced by a diploid cell undergoing a process of meosis rather than mitosis.  I assume the original diploid cell is of the somatic line?  What causes the cell to divide differently, i.e. meosis rather than mitosis?  Once the haploid cells have been generated, do they ever split or are more simply generated from other diploid cells, which are themselves generated through mitosis?  If the haploid cells DO split, do they split by a process of binary fission?

Sorry if this is dealt with in later lectures, I'm just going over the first two lectures several times at the moment to make sure I understand it reasonably well before moving on.

Is 'Monera' synonymous with 'prokaryota' ?

Thanks

The mechanisms of cell division and the generation of germ cells are dealt with in the second last lecture of this part, on the cell cycle. Suffice it to say for know that comprehending it requires sufficient knowledge in everything in the lectures up to the last two.

Yes. But as I said above, we do not class them like that anymore.