Practice Questions for Midterm 1 1) All of the following are steroid hormones except A. androgen. B. cortisol. C. estrogen. D. glucagon.

E. testosterone.

1/20/09

2) Which of the following statements about the hypothalamus is incorrect? A. It functions as an endocrine gland. B. It is part of the central nervous system. C. It is subject to feedback inhibition by certain hormones. D. It secretes tropic hormones that act directly on the uterus. E. Its neurosecretory cells terminate in the posterior pituitary. 3) The primary reason steroid hormones usually act slowly is that A. target cells tend to ignore steroid hormones in favor of nonsteroid hormones. B. they turn genes on or off and it takes time for gene products to build up or become depleted. C. they are produced at very low concentrations. D. they are too large to enter a cell and therefore must first bind to a plasma membrane receptor before having an effect on a cell. E. acting via a signal transduction pathway makes for slower responses than does directly interacting with a cell's DNA. 4) The main target organs for tropic hormones are A. muscles. B. blood vessels. C. endocrine glands. D. kidneys. E. nerves. 5) In human females, the secondary oocyte completes meiosis II A. during embryonic development. B. when penetrated by a sperm. C. at birth. D. at the onset of puberty. E. when released at ovulation. 6) The acrosome or acrosomal vesicle in a sperm cell is A. where energy is produced to allow sperm movement. B. nutrient rich for temporary sperm survival. C. a chamber used to shield DNA from the cell environment. D. a product of meiosis I. E. where hydrolytic enzymes used for egg penetration are stored. 7) A cell that contains proteins enabling a hormone to selectively bind to its plasma membrane is called a(n) A. secretory cell. B. plasma cell. C. endocrine cell. D. target cell. E. regulatory cell.

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Assume you are monitoring the concentrations of these substances in blood. If you havent eaten since 9 pm the night before, and you eat a breakfast of pancakes with lots of syrup at 7 am, show what concentrations of glucose, insulin and glucagon you would expect to see throughout the course of the morning (show from 5 am all the way to 11 am). Use a solid line for glucose, a dashed line for insulin, and a dotted line for glucagon as shown above. Indicate the concentration of glucose in the blood when it has stabilized (the homeostatic level show the real number). 90 mg/100 ml blood or 5 mM The glucose concentration should start out level at about 90 mg/100 ml at 5 am, or perhaps lower (definitely not higher). It should start rising after 7 am, and peak afterwards (9 am? 10 am?). Then, as insulin levels peak it should decrease until it stabilizes back to 90 mg/100 ml. Insulin levels should start out low, and peak shortly after glucose levels peak. Insulin levels should then fall back down to around its starting level (It could be argued it wont go completely to that level, since the pancakes will still be in the process of digestion. It will definitely not drop below the 5 am level.) The glucagon level will be high at 5 am, but highest at 7 am (right before breakfast) and will start decreasing as insulin levels increase. The glucagon curve will be like a mirror image of the insulin curve. Glucagon levels will start increasing again as insulin levels decrease.

9) A. A female patient has been diagnosed with a tumor in her anterior pituitary that causes continual release of LH and FSH. Would you expect this to cause any change in her menstrual cycle? Explain why. Would any of the other major hormones involved in the female reproductive cycle show abnormally high or low levels? Explain why. You would definitely expect the menstrual cycle to cease, as a result of the corpus luteum being maintained by the LH and it continuously releasing high levels of progesterone and estrogens. These hormones would cause the endometrium to grow, and never be shed. You might also expect the woman to be ovulating because of the tumor. More than one follicle might be maturing at a time, due to the high levels of LH and FSH. Note that I am specifically asking about the menstrual cycle, so answers relating to multiple ectopic ovulation, etc. would be correct but irrelevant. This would probably be mistaken for pregnancy, at first.

B. Another female patient was born without hCG-receptors. Why do you think she might go to a doctor? (i.e. What might she notice?) Why? hCG - human chorionic gonadotropin - is released by the zygote to alert the mothers tissues that she has become pregnant. If the mother did not possess receptors for this hormone, her corpus luteum would degenerate every menstrual cycle whether she was pregnant or not, and cause the endometrium to be shed. The fetus would thus be discarded at the woman's next menstrual period. Her complaint would be that she can never seem to get pregnant.