If it doesn’t agree with your content knowledge, eliminate it. Even if it answers the question or applies to the passage, incorrect info will never be the answer on the MCAT.

Since these are both super highly likely (nearly guaranteed) to show up at least once, you need to know them.

For amino acids, know the R group structure and classification. I have more info on what you need to know about amino acids in general in my Content Guide, but for the individual amino acids, you absolutely need to memorize them. I recommend the “Amino Acids Quiz” on the app store.

For hormones, you need to know the classification (steroid vs peptide), what released it, what it acts on, and what the result of the hormone is.

Like P/S, experimental design is a big part of the B/B section, and this is something that always trips up my students. If there’s a graph that shows that increasing protein X led to increased antibody Z count, you may be thinking that protein X causes antibody Z production to increase. We cannot make that conclusion with this data alone. Pretty much always on the MCAT, to prove that one thing causes another, we need two different studies or separate observations. The first will prove that they are correlated, and the second will most often show how one causes the other (if they even do in the first place).

You cannot say that something causes something else if all you have is a correlation!

I wasn’t a big fan of using my notes for the B/B section, but a good rule of thumb is that if you can no longer keep track of the entire pathway or relationships in your head alone, it’s time to start writing things down.

For example, if X inhibits Y which promotes A which inhibits B which negatively feeds back on X, that’s going to be much easier to just write down so you have it set in stone rather than trying to keep all of that square in your head.

I will have a Cheat Sheet that aligns what exactly you need to know for MCAT lab techniques, but sort of like knowing the amino acids and steroids, knowing the basics of the lab techniques will almost guarantee you a question or two (or a few). Don’t skip over them because someone on some Reddit page 6 years ago mentioned they’re “not high yield”!

The MCAT will often test your knowledge of organs or channels or hormones or whatever by inhibiting them to see if you know what would happen next. It will both help jumpstart questions like these as well as further aid your understanding of the content if you can do this in the first place.