How can living organisms survive in near boiling hot springs? How can you identify the animals in a forest just though the DNA in the soil? How do cells store the information to function and be a living thing? What are the chemical foundations of life?This class will cover a variety of subjects drawn from the first half of a typical high school biology curriculum. We will cover molecular biology, cell biology, and genetics. We will mostly not cover evolution and ecology in this class, covering those in other classes including zoology.We will talk about the molecules that make life, the parts of cells and how they function, how cells combine to create organisms, the microbes around us, and how genetic information is stored, used, and inherited. This class is open to students of all skill levels and prior experience, no particular knowledge is required to succeed in it.

This class is a double block with Biology-Cells through Genetics Lab in third block. These should be taken together.