Unit 5 Reflection

Unit 5 Reflection 

This unit was mostly about DNA and RNA. Information flows from DNA to RNA to proteins. Some of the themes of this unit were the structure of DNA, how the body makes proteins, and translating DNA into RNA. Ex: TAGC to AUCG. 

Some of my successes in this unit was understanding Mutations and the different types of mutations. I think that the protein synthesis lab helped me understand better and also the codon bingo. Another success was understanding the differences between DNA and RNA, both structural and functions. RNA is single-stranded and contains U instead of T. RNA also serves as a temporary copy of the gene. It also delivers the copy to the ribosome which they call mRNA.

Some of my setbacks in this unit were understanding gene expression and regulation. I understand the different between exons and introns but I don't understand gene regulation. Introns are not being expressed and exons are being expressed. 

After looking back at my notes and thinking about what I know and what I don't I realized that I need to focus much of my studying on the last vodcast we had which was gene regulation and gene expression. I only understand a small part of the vodcast I think that I understand everything else in the unit from the labs we did in class. 

From the results from Vark I think that I should thoroughly review my labs and diagrams when studying. 

 

Protein Synthesis Lab Conclusion

Protein Synthesis Lab Conclusion

To make proteins first, ribosomes link the amino acids together. In the cell, the DNA directs or provides the master blueprint for creating proteins, using transcription of information to mRNA and then translation to create proteins.         

http://www.science-explained.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Cell.jpg                                               

There can be different effects with different mutations. For example substitution can result in no change or some change. Frameshift and deletion changes the protein because it adds or deletes a base. All of them add some change to the protein but you can't say one has a greater effect than the other because it all depends on what letter is added, removed, or substituted. 

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/images/evo/hemomutant.gif

For step 5 I chose substitution because although we already tested that on out in the specific case there was no change so I wanted to test it out again so see what the effect would be with change. It matters where the mutation occurs because if it a insertion or deletion at the beginning it will differ all the ones following and not have its original sequence. 

Mutations can effect our lives with diseases. Tay-sachs disease is a rare inherited disorder that destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Mutations in the HEXA gene cause the disease. The HEXA gene provides instructions for making part of an enzyme called beta-hexosaminidase A, which plays an important role in the brain and spinal cord.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp5M1d7CSS4rF3shkCxNg-gkCqyVbfznT9-dP8syXiAj_O6NVxjTeIXXMeFuGgfz4OJMn725YxcdV0tSgY9n1-oEmkVo_eHilPaKqgAgA3sKXpum9QAPcWDmP6GUY87fHfK4FmG21HQw6_/s1600/Tay+sachs+disease.png

DNA Extraction Lab Conclusion

The question/problem of this lab was how can DNA be separated from cheek cells in order to study it. We separated the DNA by first gargling Gatorade in our mouths and then spitting in back into the cup. WE mixed the Gatorade with detergent, pineapple juice, and salt. After that we added alcohol because the Gatorade is polar and the alcohol is nonpolar which means that they don't mix and that made the DNA go up and be visable. Our claim was that DNA would be visible after we added the alcohol and that is correct because after we added alcohol to the gatorade mixture the DNA was soon visible. My biggest error in this lab was that I accidentally had too much gatorade mixture and when I added alcohol it was too much so when I tried to dump some out I accidentally got rid of way too much and I had barely any gatorade mixture left. The effect it had on my lab was that I didn't have enough of the mixture that barely any DNA came up for mine. The second error was that some of us got gatorade in our DNA when we were trying to separate it and the Gatorade ruined the DNA. 

Two recommendations I would give is first to know exactly what your doing and the next step of the experiment and second don't gargle too much gatorade because we only needed a little. 

The purpose of this lab was to show that it is very easy to find DNA and it can be done anywhere. With just a few steps and materials you can separate DNA from your cheek cells. I can relate this lab to the DNA vodcasts we have went over and also the DNA models we made. This lab can be applied to other situations if your trying to find more DNA, now we know how to separate it. 

Credit: Derek Fung

Unit 4 Reflection

Unit 4 Reflection

This unit was focused on sex and reproduction. Some of my strengths in this unit were understanding the punnett square. At first I didn't completely understand it but after I reviewed my vodcasts and practiced them online they made a lot of sense. Another thing that I was good at was memorizing the benefits and costs of both asexual and sexual reproduction. My setback in this unit would definitely be the mitosis vs meiosis and their processes like interphase, prophase, etc. While doing my infographic I learned more about this unit and it was definitely a fun project because it was a way to learn from colorful pictures and fonts that really draws your attention. Some of my successes during studying would be that I used real life examples that helped me understand better. For the codominance and incomplete dominance I tried thinking of real life situations that have happened to be or my family that helped me remember which on is which. 

My scores were:

• Visual 12
• Aural 13
• Read/Write 8
• Kinesthetic 8

My scores surprised me a little because I thought I would have scored higher on the kinesthetic and much lower on aural. 

Coin Sex Lab Relate and Review

Coin Sex Lab Relate and Review

 In the lab, we tested how coins can represent gene segregation or meiosis. The coins represented the gene. We labeled the coins with specific capital and lower case letters. We flipped the coins randomly to see what we got. For one part of the lab we used a capital B to represent a bipolar allele and a lower case b to represent a normal allele. The probability of having a bipolar offspring would be 50%. Homozygous is two of the same alleles and heterozygous is two different alleles.

In the dihybrid experiment, we modeled the process of recombination when we combined the results of our coins to make traits for the "offspring". X-linked inheritance will give you traits on the x chromosome and Autosomal alleles are disorders that are genetically linked. Monohybrid is the mating between two people with different alleles. 

The limit of using probability to predict an offspring's traits would be how many possible traits the coins have that represent the "parents". 

This understanding relates to my life because now I know how I got my genes and how my parents received their traits. My grandfather had blue eyes and know I know why none of my mothers' brothers and sisters never got blue eyes. This also relates to my life because if I ever have children I can use the punnett square to determine the probability that my children will have certain traits. 

My Infographic

Here's the larger version of my infographic that I published on the original website 

https://magic.piktochart.com/output/9419259-untitled-infographic-conflict-copy

Unit 3 Reflection

Unit 3 Reflection

This unit was about Cells and what is inside them. It was also about photosynthesis vs cellular respiration. We learned about the different organelles in a cell and what there structure and function is. 

In this unit, some of my strengths were learning the difference between prokaryote and eukaryote cells. Prokaryote cells have no nucleus and are typically smaller that eukaryote cells that have a nucleus. One weakness in this unit for me was learning all the different roles of the organelles and how each one is used. One topic that I completely understood was passive transport vs active transport. Passive requires no energy but active requires energy. The labs that we performed in class really helped me use what I learned and apply it in the labs. 

For this incoming test I had/am going to review all my notes and watch the hardest vodcast agin. I'm also going to read the chapter that I didn't chose to take notes on which would be chapter 8. 

Egg Diffusion Lab

 Egg Diffusion Lab

 In this lab we asked how and why does a cell's internal environment change, as it's external environment changes? During this lab we first placed the eggs in vinegar for more than 48 hours and after we took them out of the vinegar we washed them and then placed them into a different substance. The vinegar removed the membrane. 

 While looking at the class data I notice that after the sugar concentration increased the mass and circumference of the egg decreased. The change was cause by passive diffusion when an area of high concentration moves to an area of low concentration. Also more solute inside the cell 

A cell's internal environment changes as it's external changes because of diffusion. It would move from areas of high concentration to low concentration until they reach eqilibrium. After placing the eggs in vinegar, water, and sugar the eggs had shrunk and grown. After placing it in vinegar it shrunk but when we placed them in water and sugar the egg grew. 

This lab demonstrates the biological principal that a cell's internal environment changes as it's external environment changes. This lab demonstrated this principal. 

I can relate this lab to real life with examples like why fresh vegetables are sprinkled with water at markets the water is keeping the vegetables fresh with hypertonic solutions. They are solutions with less solute concentration that what is inside the cell with cells gaining water.  

Based on this experiment the next thing I would want to test would be placing the egg in oil because vinegar and oil are opposites and they don't mix so I would like to know if it would do the opposite of what the vinegar did to the egg or if it would do the same thing. 

Egg Macromolecule Lab

In this lab we asked the question Can macromolecules be identified in an egg cell? We found that for the cell membrane, there were polysaccharides and lipids. The polysaccharides turned black and the lipids turned orange. Membranes are made of phospholipids. For the egg white they had all four macromolecules, proteins, lipids, polysaccharides, and monosaccharides. The proteins turned purple and they were their because they are important for growth and development. Also enzymes are for immunity. The lipids turned orange, the polysaccharides turned black, and the monosaccharides turned green. They are all easy for growth and development. The yolk also carried all the macromolecules and they all made proteins. They turned the same colors as for the egg whites.

A few errors that we made during our experiment that may have affected our results were that when I was pouring the egg whites, yolk, and membrane into my test tubes I accidentally used the same pipet for everything but when I realized we weren't supposed to do that I stopped. I don't know if this affected our results but I won't do that next time because it might affect the data. Another error was that one of our table partners more water into the test tubes and it was inaccurate. He had pours either more or less and that might have affected our colors in the results. In future experiments I will definitely be more careful with accuracy because in some labs it can affect your data greatly. We have to be more careful when we read the directions and also try to be as accurate with the water.

The purpose of this lab was to show what kinds of macromolecules are present in different parts of the egg. I don't have much to relate this lab to but I can relate this with previously working with eggs in cooking. In this lab we went in depth on the different parts of the egg. Mr. Orre was saying that there is a thin cell membrane around the yolk and thats what keeps it together. I remembered seeing the membrane during cooking when I cracked the egg and there was a shiny layer over the yolk which now I know is called the membrane. Overall from this lab I learned a lot about eggs and what things affect them. I also learned about the different types of macromolecules in the egg and what their purpose is. I am definitely more familiar with the roles of macromolecules and that could help me on a test.

Big Questions 

Are we alone in the universe?
I chose this question because it's something I question quite often and something that really interests me. The universe is infinite and there are so many opportunities for life beyond Earth. About a year ago I watched a documentary called Cosmos and it really raised my interest in space science. They talked about how there are infinite planets in infinite galaxies in infinite universes. Something they said that really has stuck with me was "... and think about how each universe is like a water molecule in an endless waterfall." After hearing this I was quite open with the suggestion that life may exist beyond earth because I believe that all of that would not be there if there wasn't a purpose. The current hypothesis for this question is that in the next few decades we will potentially discover 60 billion habitable planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone.
Some of my questions are...

1. Is there life beyond Earth? 
2. How much more oil do we have left?
3. Is it possible to explore beyond the Milky way?
4. Can we create a man made star?
5. Can we travel faster than the speed of light continuously for long periods of time?
6. Will the sun ever blow up?
7. Will there be another big bang?
8. How much is the maximum amount of people we can fit on this Earth?
9. Are we going to bury people on top of each other?
10. Are we going to have a limit of how many kids we can have?
11. Are there unknown species on Earth?
12. How did the first humans figure out how to reproduce?
13. Has there been multiple big bangs?
14. What is the sweetest substance?
15. Will we be able to survive as temperatures quickly increase?
16. What's the longest a person can run for?
17. When is Apple going to stop making iPhones?
18. Do fish sleep?
19. How long can a human go without sleep?
20. How many species are on the Earth?

Identifying Questions and Hypotheses

This study was found to show the average of time a person is on Facebook everyday. They found that the average amount a time a person spends on Facebook each day is between 36.79 minutes to 52.28 minutes.

Question: What is the average time spent on Facebook.

Hypothesis: The average time a user sends on Facebook is greater than 14 minutes a day.

In the world today people are so connected to social media that the result of this study was not unexpected. 

Facebook has many purposes which can increase the time a person spends on the app every day. Facebook is used for school too which is adding the amount of time on the app each day. 

http://mashable.com/2010/02/16/facebook-nielsen-stats/#bQ0xkB9oDOqc

Unit 2 Reflection 

In this unit we learned a lot about macromolecules like carbohydrates, lipids, nucleic acids, and proteins. Proteins are made of amino acids and nucleic acids store and transmit genetic information. Lipids are mostly made of carbon and hydrogen bonds. Carbohydrates are the main source of energy and plants and animals use it for structural purposes. We learned a lot about enzymes and also did a lab to help understand enzymes. I learned that the pH and temperature will affect enzymes and that with the right temperature It will work at a good constant speed. Some of my weaknesses in this unit were understanding the different between the structure and function of macromolecules. The sweetness lab was quite confusing and that is something that I need to look back at for more clarification. One thing that wasn't very confusing during that lab was explaining how sweet each sugar was and which sugars are the sweetest or the most plain. A success was understanding the structure of enzymes. I can thank the teacher for drawing the structure and explaining it several times during our do now. Another successful topic in this unit was the pH scale with acids and bases. It was a successful topic because it was mostly review. A cohesion is an atttraction between molecules of the same substance and adhesion is the attraction between molecules of different substances. A capillary action is cohesion+adhesion. A mixture is material composed of 2+ elements/compounds that are physically mixed together. A solute is a substance that is dissolved and a solvent is a substance that the substate dissolves in. A polar is an unequal distribution of charges between H and O. 

Cheese Lab

In this lab the problem was that the milk had to let the bacteria digest. When we let the milk curdle we are letting the bacteria digest. We found that with a hot temperature the rennin takes 10 minutes to curdle while chymosin only takes 5, At a controlled temperature they take the same time (15 minutes), and at a controlled pH chymosin takes 15 minutes while rennin only takes 10. My recommentation is to have the enzyme condition at acidic and use either rennin or chymosin because then it will only take 5 minutes to curdle.

Some mistakes that we made were that we took a long time in between pouring the rennin into the different tubes. We also put the last tube in between our armpit about a minute after we put the other tubes in the hot and the cold. In future experiments we can have multiple people pouring the rennin at the same time to quicken the process and put the rennin in the hot and cold water at the exact same time and also in between our armpit.

This lab was done to demonstrate how cheese is made and what the right temperature it takes for milk to curdle. The cold one didn’t curdle after 15 minutes, the warm one curdled after 15 minutes, and the hot one curdled after 10 minutes. I can relate this lab to our vodcast because in the vodcast we were told that pH and temperature effects enzymes and in this lab we saw how those factors affect how long it took for the milk to curdle. Based on my experience from this lab I have a pretty clear idea on how cheese is made and how long it takes to make the cheese.

Curdling Agent:	chymosin	rennin	buttermilk	milk (control)
Acid	5	5
Base
Cold
Hot	5	10
temp control	15	15
pH control	15	10
Average of controls

Sweetness lab

1.) In the sweetness lab my partner and I learned that based on our data monosaccharaides are the sweetest and polysaccharides are the most plain tasting. Monosaccharaides include glucose and fructose. I rated glucose a 150 and fructose a 200. I rated disaccharides all over the place. The first example was sucrose which is a disaccharide and they gave that a rating of 100. The other disaccharides were galactose, maltose, and lactose. I gave them a rating of 100, 0, and 50. Based on step 2 from our lab I can conclude that the sugars that are found in trees and plants are sweeter than the ones that aren't and also the ones that only have one O in their structure .

2.) The structure of carbohydrates affects the way they are used by cells/organisms because the different types of carbohydrates are used for different things. Disaccharides are used for transforming the suns energy into food. Monosaccharides are used during photosynthesis and polysaccharides are found in algae and are hard to digest.

3.) My partner and I mostly agreed on the ratings but the other partners in our group had a different opinion on some of the sugars. The first reason why people might not agree on the level of sweetness because people might have a different opinion on how sweet a sugar is. People might disagree that glucose is 200 instead of 150 but that is just based on someones opinion on how sweet at rating of 200 is. The second reason is that a person might have more or less taste buds that detect sweetness of the sugars. The final reason is that tasters might believe that 0 is bitter instead of tasting plain.

4.) Humans taste sweetness with taste receptor cells. The taste buds are scattered in all different places of our bodies. Taste buds have pores that they open out on the tongue. Sweet substances like sucrose bind together to form G-protein-coupled receptors (GPRCs) at the cell surface. Based on this information I conclude that humans can all rank the sweetness samples differently because they might have a different amount of taste bods on their tongue. More taste buds may taste sweeter for the taster and less taste buds may have a weaker taste of sweetness. 

sources: http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/Taste.html

Ava's biology collage

Ava Hooman's Jean Lab conclusion

Jean Lab

In our jean lab our hypothesis was that If bleach takes away color, then when I add bleach, the jeans will have a lighter color. It turned out that our hypothesis was correct. We had two different color jeans(darker blue and lighter blue). The lighter blue turned a very light blue almost white color while the darker blue had turns a lot lighter but was still a blue color. 100% concentration of bleach usually damages the clothing and makes the fabric white but by adding water to our mixture it just lightened the jean square. We added the 50% concentration to the darker color jean squares and that’s why the darker color turns lighter and not completely white.

During our experiment we made some dramatic mistakes that delayed our experiment. We started our experiment well when we poured the bleach and water into the containers we poured fairly fast and accurate. After when we poured the mixtures into the petri dishes with the jean squares after about 20 seconds one of our team members accidentally spilled the petri dishes and a lot of the mixtures spilled over on the table. We hurried to get paper napkins and water to clean up the mess. Over the time it took to clean everything we spilled even more which delayed our experiment and made our data inaccurate.  

For the next lab we do we will be a lot more careful so we don’t spill especially when working with liquids. This lab was done to demonstrate how bleach can affect jeans and how bleach concentration affects how much lighter the fabric turns. Based on my experience from the lab I have a good idea on how bleach works and how much you need for a specific situation.

Concentration (% bleach)	Average Color Removal (Scale 1-10)	Average Fabric Damage (Scale 1-10)
100	10	5
50	8	2
25	5	1
12.5	3	1
0	0	0