Bio!

How did you do on the work? I think I did pretty well on the work this week. The play dough lab really helped me visualize what was going on with transcription and translation. I was having trouble grasping what exactly was happening during those processes, but now it is much better. Vodcast 4.3 has a lot of new terminology, so it will definitely take me a little bit of time to get all of the new terms locked in my head. I probably will need to make flash cards with all of the new terms in order to really learn them. What do you think you understand well? I think I understand the genetic engineering aspect of this vodcast and the different methods used to genetically engineered organisms. I also think I have a better understanding of transcription and translation after this week’s activities which is good because that is what I was struggling with last week. Where do you think you could improve? I think I could improve my understanding of the first part of vodcast 4.3. In th...

How did you do on the work? I felt like I did pretty well on the work this week. For the first portion of the week, we focused on the history of DNA and the experiments that led to its ultimate discovery. The remainder of the week was focused on the transitions from DNA to RNA to protein. The information on the history of DNA was pretty easy to grasp, we learned a lot of it in advanced bio. I really liked the DNA Family Relationship Analysis. It was cool to analyze the results of the STR and try to determine if Jeff was in fact a biological child of Mr. and Mrs. H. Once I figured out how to read the STR, that was much easier! So far, this unit seems to be much easier to grasp than the energy unit. What do you think you understand well? I think I definitely understand the history of DNA and the experiments conducted which ultimately led to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Frederick Griffith discovered that bacteria could give other bacteria heritable traits, even if they wer...

As Albert Einstein once said, “The greatest scientists are artists as well.” The work a scientist does in a laboratory is obviously quite different from the work an artist does in a studio, yet the premise is quite the same. In the scientific environment, a person is questioning. He or she is questioning what they do not understand in the natural world. Many people in the world believe that the work of scientists requires very little creativity or imagination, yet that is the whole basis of experimentation in the scientific community. When a scientist conducts an experiment, they are not looking for a yes or no answer to a question and when an experiment is conducting a scientist is not looking for an answer that they will be able to memorize. Instead, when an experiment is conducting a scientist or group of scientists are on a quest to better understand the natural world. Teachers often have students self-design their own labs in order to foster creativity in the classroom. By h...

Just me playing some Apples to Apples! Just a causal picture of a bear and me where the bear was...

Picture with a mammal at a Natural History Museum! Spider's Alive Exhibit in Boston! Water-based amusement park! Three types of trees in my neighborhood! Experiencing the big wind at the weather discovery center! Sleeping under the stars with Allison! Holding five earth worms!

          Okay, this is definitely one of my favorite articles that I have read so far! How can it even be possible that creatures are living to be over 200 years old! It is also crazy that the one thing that could be killing off this shark is the changing temperatures of the Arctic Ocean. Not humans hunting them, not humans hunting the Greenland Shark's prey, but instead global warming. This global warming crisis could lead to changes in fishing practices and therefore a downward trend for these incredible creatures.           Easily the craziest part of this article in my opinion is the rate at which this shark grows and matures. First of all, a study has estimated that the Greenland Shark grows at less than one centimeter per year. Compared to an infant human, which grows approximately 1.5-2.5 centimeters a MONTH, it is clear just how slowly the Greenland Shark really grows. However when you compare the lifespan of a human to the Gre...

I absolutely loved the topic of this article! I have seen the effects of chemo and radiation on a person and always wondered why they could not just target the cancerous cells. Why these chemicals were essentially poisoning the whole body and ultimately killing the person. It is SO crazy that at this point we can edit exactly what makes us, us! These scientists can edit the genes within a cell and then multiply them to eventually reintroduce them back into the bloodstream. I don’t think it could get much cooler than that!! Of course there are risks to this process which include gene edits in the wrong place, excessive autoimmune response, etc. Excessive autoimmune response would trigger the cells to start attacking the gut, adrenaline glands, or other normal tissues. It is so beyond interesting that they plan to extract the T cells from the site of the tumour because of how those cells are designed to attack cancer. I do wonder though what happens when all of the cancerous cells ar...