Bio!

How did you do on your work? This week I think I did pretty well on my work. The Mendelian Genetics packet was pretty easy for me and I really like the work we did with the pedigrees. I still do not exactly understand the  purpose of the pedigrees at this point in time, but they were pretty fun to work with. I was pleasantly surprised with how much I remembered from sophomore year. This is definitely one of my favorite units and it makes even more sense now because of my background in stats. Sophomore year, chi square values and critical values did not really make sense to me, but now chi square tests make a lot more sense.  What do you think you understand well? I think I understand the chi square tests as well as Mendelian genetics. Punnett squares are also really fun to work with especially with the new trick we learned to avoid having giant punnett squares. Crossing over did not make a lot of sense to me in the beginning of the week, but once we started l...

How did you do on your work? This week I felt pretty confident on everything we worked on in class. A lot of my time at home was spent working on typing up the PCR lab, and I felt pretty good with that lab by the time I turned it in. It was fun reviewing the stages of mitosis and looking at the different slides. The mini lab that we ran refreshed my memory on what each stage looked like and how the stages were different from each other. The packets were not too bad this week and my group was able to finish them in class. What do you think you understand well? I think I understand how each of the stages differ from each other and what they are responsible for. In addition to the stages, I also feel pretty solid with the checkpoints of mitosis which was cleared up by the click and learn. I wish I would have drawn the phases of mitosis when I was taking notes on the prezi, because it would have made the mini lab much easier. Where do you think you can improve? I think I can imp...

Three Things I Learned From This Activity: Specific chromosomes are more frequently affected by cancers. In our group a common chromosome was seventeen.  We saw a patient that only had two gene mutations and can have cancer.  My patient had different totally genes from any of the other people in my group which showed that different genes can cause the same cancer. All of the different mutations led to Leukemia which is very interesting to me.  Two Things That Surprised/ Interested Me: I thought it was interesting how scientists are working to try and rid the body of cancer. Leukemia treatments involve taking out stem cells before the cancer treatment starts to make sure they are not affected by the poison that will soon be injected into the body. Once the treatments are over, the stem cells are injected back into the body.  I really thought it was interesting that different genes can cause the same type of cancer. It seems kind of crazy that totally dif...

Weekly Reflection for Week of February 27-  March 03 How did you do on the work? Overall I think I did pretty well on the work we did this week. I understood every aspect of the lab and I had a lot of fun running the lab. I was a little disappointed that Lincoln was the only member of our group that got actual data, so I guess I should have skipped the granola bar right before the lab! Running the PCR lab gave me a better understanding of not only PCR, but biotechnology in general which I think helped me on the quiz. What do you think you understand well? I think I understand the virus vodcast well, but I definitely will need to review the information a little bit more, and study the new terms a little bit more. I understood each of the steps in the PCR lab, and after reading the whole packet, I understood why we were doing each step in the order that we did which is making the lab write up much easier. Where do you think you could improve? I think I could improve my ove...