1st Blog Post

Helping Save Endangered Honeybees

20 time is the activity where we spend 20% of our class time weekly working individual/or in pairs on the project of our choice. We had a large range of topics we could pick but it had to be biology related. My essential question for my project is what can we do to help save endangered Honeybees? I chose to do this as my project because Honeybees are so essential to life and food. If there were no more Honeybees then the food chain would fall and it would effect a lot of species. My goals for this project is to find the best environment for these bees to live in so they are safe while producing honey. In areas where there were many Honeybees a few decades ago there aren't any more in those areas. Another goal I have is to spread awareness so people understand how important this species is to our world and how they need to learn to respect this species more. To measure my progress I will use a google drive and fill in what I did every week and what I will do the next week. Moving forward I will research where Honeybees have lived the best and safest from data and try to visit some people who have their own Honeybees. My voice for this project is to spread awareness and I hope people that have Honeybees can learn from my research so they can take care of them better and they can be more protected. 

Unit 7 Reflection

Unit 7 Reflection

In Unit 7 during the Conservation biologist project I think I was assertive because in the beginning when we were figuring out what to do as a topic some of us were headstrong so it was a little difficult to agree on a topic. We first went with my idea which was the Empty Quarter desert. When I went to the bathroom they changed it and decided to make it the Pacific Ocean. When I find out about that I was calm and I didn't argue because I knew I needed to compromise and at the end it works great for all of us. The collaboration overall I thought was a good partnering because my partners and I worked hard in class so we wouldn't have to do any at home so that was motivation for us to work harder. 

This unit unlike last semesters units focused on the bigger picture. We learned about ecology and the study of species. We also looked at factors that affect population like immigration and emigration, births, deaths, and disease. Population is the average year by year number of people living in a area. Physical changes to the environment can also change population. For example volcanoes in Hawaii can change how many people leave and the area change that can affect land people live on.
In food chains there are trophic levels and only 10% of the energy of a trophic level gets transferred to the next level. The levels of organization are first individual/organism, population, community, ecosystem, biome, and lastly biosphere which is the highest level.

http://avahooman.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-years-goals-i-will-do-better-on-my.html

This is my blog post for my New Year goals and my first goal was to do better on my biology tests. I was going to accomplish this by studying ahead of time instead of the night before, and really understanding the concepts from the vodcasts when I watch them. 

Unit 6 Reflection

Unit 6 Reflection

In unit 6 I learned about genetic engineering. This unit was about genetic engineering and biotechnology applications. It was a fairly shorter unit and we looked more at the bigger picture of things instead of going into small details. We also looked at how society and science interact. In class we watched the movie Gattaca and it really helped me understand altering genes and it was extremely entertaining too.
My first new years goal was to do better on my biology tests and I said I would accomplish that by studying throughout the unit instead of just the night before. This unit I finished my chapter notes in the beginning of the unit so I could understand the concepts better and I have been focusing on really understanding our labs.
 One of my setbacks in this unit was understanding the pGLO pre-lab vodcast and the pGLO lab was the most challenging lab for me to understand. To understand this concept I will re watch the vodcast and look out other people's conclusions to see what they understood. One of my successes was the Electrophoresis virtual lab because the lab online went through step by step and after preforming the lab in class I had a full understanding of the process. 

I have linked my blog posts from this unit down below: 
http://avahooman.blogspot.com/2016/01/candy-electrophoresis-lab-conclusion_22.html
http://avahooman.blogspot.com/2016/01/pglo-observations-data-recording.html
http://avahooman.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-years-goals-i-will-do-better-on-my.html
http://avahooman.blogspot.com/2016/01/recombinant-dna-conclusion-process-of.html

pGLO Observations , Data Recording & Analysis

pGLO Observations , Data Recording & Analysis

1

Plate Number of Colonies Color of colonies under room light Color of colonies under   UV light - pGLO LB 400 Yellow yellow - pGLO LB/amp 0 No colonies No colonies + pGLO LB/amp 225 Yellow yellow + pGLO LB/amp/ara 200 Yellow Bright green

2.
	Two new traits transformed were that the + pGLO LB/amp/ara glows bright green and all of them grew.
3.	400 bacteria were in 100uL on each plate because there were 400 colonies in the pGLO LB.
4.
	The role of arabinose in the plates was the sugar and help the bacteria grow.
5.	Three current uses for GFP in research or applied science are first as a reporter gene to be easily expressed in bacteria, cell culture or plants and animals. The related protein can easily be measured. The second use is to create a biosensor to measure and detect an analyte. The third use is the application of less harmful fluorescent proteins such as GFP in fluorescence microscopy, studying living cells.
6.	Give an example of another application of genetic engineering. Another application of genetic engineering is glow-in-the-dark cats. This works by altering the cats DNA so that the fur of the animal can glow in the dark.

Candy Electrophoresis Lab Conclusion

Candy Electrophoresis Lab Conclusion 

1.  The two blue bands are moving in the "wrong" direction than the rest of the bands. 
2.  Fast green FCF would migrate similarly to the dyes we examined in class because it is a food dye and we were working with food dyes in class. 
3.  Many dog food manufactures add food coloring to their dog food because it helps give the appearance of more "rich and meaty" food. Also the more attractive the food looks to better it will look in the home it's sitting in. 
4.  Artificial food colors are preferred to natural food colors because the artificial ones make the food look more attractive to eat because the colors might be more bright and not a dark unattractive color, even though both of the foods would taste the same even if one was with artificial food coloring and the other was natural. 
5.  The voltage and the gel concentration control the distance that the colored dyes solution migrate. 
6.  EMF helps move the dyes through the gel. Electrophoresis refers to the electromotive force (EMF) that is used to move the molecules through the gel matrix. 
7.  The holes of the gel causes the molecules to separate by size. The more concentrated the gel holes, the better the molecules stay inside. 
8.  The smaller the DNA molecules, the faster it separates. 600 daltons would take faster to separate than 5000 daltons would.  
   

Recombinant DNA Lab Conclusion 

The process of producing recombinant DNA is basically putting a foreign DNA into a host DNA. For example a piece of human gene, insulin gene, can be put into a plasmid using restriction enzymes, such as EcoR I. This becomes a recombinant DNA. Then insert the plasmid into the bacteria. 

1.) You can use ampicillin resistant plasmid if the bacteria intakes that plasmid then the bacteria can grow on the petri dish containing ampicillin to stay alive and reproduce more bacteria. You would not use tetracycline and kanamycin because if the plasmid is not resistant to that bacteria the bacteria would not survive. 
2.) Restriction enzymes cut DNA on a specific sequence. They are cutting DNA into smaller pieces. We used Xma 1 and Ligase because they cut the the plasmid and cell DNA. 
3.) There would be a gap in the middle and the plasmid wouldn't be a complete circle. 
4.) This process is important to our everyday life because it produces better breeding plants and animals, useful for making drugs for human diseases, and cloning. 
5.) Some other applications for genetic engineering are in agriculture with genetically modified crops and genetically modified organisms. Another application is with BioArt which is created with bacteria to create black and white photographs. And lastly some other examples are blue roses and glowing fish. 

New Year's Goals

New Year's Goals

1. I will do better on my biology tests. I will achieve this goal by studying ahead of time and studying as we go through the unit and not just the couple of days before the test. I can make practice tests and quiz myself so I can see what I know and still need to learn before the test. A mistake I did first semester was that when I was studying I was learning the material while I was studying and not just reviewing it.  
2. This year I will work to make it to the badminton team at the school because I have been working hard this past year and need to continue working hard to make it. I will go in to the badminton studio to practice with others on weekends and attend every class I have. The tryouts are in February, so I will work my hardest this month to improve my skills before the tryouts.