Research: Black-Footed Ferret

The black-footed ferret was believed to be extinct many years ago.  When Europeans settled all over North America, they found that the soil was incredibly fertile.  However, there were "too" many prairie dogs.  They labelled the prairie dogs as pests and money would be rewarded for each prairie dog that was killed.  Black-footed ferrets hunt these prairie dogs and when the population for their food severely declined, so did the black-footed ferrets.  It was not only the disappearance of their food that pushed them on the verge of extinction.  As the Europeans tended the fields and altered the land, black-footed ferrets also lost their habitat.  Habitat and food are are crucial to the survival of any organism and with the loss of those two factors, the population of black-footed ferrets disappeared.  

Luckily in 1981 near Meeteetse, Wyoming, a small population of these ferrets were found.  24 of them were captured as the population continued to decline.  The captured ferrets were taken to a captive breeding facility.  Each year, they release a couple of ferrets back into the wild and hopefully the population will continue to rise.  

History of the black-footed ferret. (2011). Retrieved from http://blackfootedferret.org/history

Response: The Cove

The main defender of dolphins in the documentary, The Cove, is Rick O'Berry.  The turning point in his life that made him completely change and "turn his Porsches in for this crusade" was the death of Cathy (Flipper).  He had picked out Cathy, the dolphin and trained her as Flipper for the TV show.  However, when Cathy committed suicide in his arms, he realized that the stress made her miserable.  After spending more than ten years in the dolphin industry, Rick's main goal is to get Taiji, Japan to stop slaughtering dolphins.  Not only were they killing dolphins, but there were slowly killing their children as well.  Mercury is a toxic substance that is found in dolphin meat and due to bio magnification, when humans consume dolphin meat, the amount of mercury magnifies in humans.  The dolphin meat was given to children as part of their mandatory lunches as a media cover up 

Reflection: Sharkwater

I've always thought that documentaries are boring but the documentary we saw in Bio class was amazing.  I have had shark fin soup as its considered to be "the best", and so the soup is always present for weddings and birthdays.  However, I don't think I can ever have shark fin soup without that heavy feeling.  As our population kills off sharks, it reminds me of humans overfishing.  We disrupt our ecosystem in a couple of years which takes decades to undo.  Sharks are on the top of the food chain, meaning that there aren't many to start with in the first place.  Sharks dominant the waters and without them, the entire marine ecosystem won't be balance.  I've thought about sharks to this extent.  I'm guilty of fearing sharks because they're big animals that have sharp teeth with scary stories being told about them.  Nonetheless, watching Rob swim with the sharks is truly amazing.  On the other hand, watching fishermen cut the sharks' fin off is cruel.  Like that bride who gave the analogy about someone cutting off her ear because it tastes good and leaving her to die, that analogy represents how mean we are.  Why would you throw back the shark without its fins?  It can't survive without its fins; it's animal cruelty.  It just seems to be that humans can't seem to get anything right.  We overfish, we endanger sharks, we don't distribute food evenly, we cause global warming; honestly, Earth would just be better without us.

Yet, we have an equal say in this and so we put up a fight against those who wish to participate in this billion dollar industry.  You should never make money out of someone/something's misery; it's not right or moral.  Before this movie, I had never really understood what was happening in regards to the fins but after watching it, I can't ever look at fins the same way.

Clothespins and Muscle Fatigue

Analysis

1.  As I progressed through each trial, my strength began to decline from the repetitious motion.  The more trials that I went through, my finger couldn't keep up to the previous amount of squeezes.

2.By the end of the trails, my finger was cramping and feeling funny whenever I would try to do an extra squeeze.  In addition, my wrist had a funny sprain feeling to it.

3.  I think being distracted and concentrating on something else would allow me to get more squeezes.  I feel that with my mind focused on something else, my brain wouldn't be so focused on this one motion which would allow me to continue without feeling uncomfortable.  

4. My results between my dominant (right) hand and non-dominant (left) hand were different.  On average, my right hand was able to squeeze more times than my left.  They are different as actions are easily done with my right than my left seeing as right is that hand that I write with, hold chopsticks with, etc.  In a sense, my right hand has more "experience" and "exercise" to do this motion.  

5. After 10 minutes, your muscles are no longer tense and no longer feel that constant strain that you felt.  Basically, that ten minutes of rest are like a reset button.  

20 Points: Metabolism

1. Living organisms must continually capture, store, and use energy to carry out the function of life.

2. Catabolic Reaction - breaking down complex structures
Anabolic Reaction - building complex substances from simpler subunits

3. Energy is absorbed when reactant bonds break and energy is released when product bonds form

4.Transition state - in chemical reaction, a temporary condition in which bonds within reactants are breaking and the bonds between products are forming

5.  Exothermic - release free energy - (-/\ G) - spontaneous ; endothermic - gain free energy - (/\ G) - not spontaneous

6. Free energy - energy that can do useful work

7. Phosphorylation - attatching a phosphate group to an organic molecule (i.e. ADP) ; therefore making it more reactive

8. Redox reaction - a chemical reaction involving the transwer of one or more electrons from one atom to another; where reduction and oxidation occurs

9. Reducing again - loses an electron ; Oxidizing agent - takes an electron ; oxidation - process of losing ; reduction - process of gaining

10. Enzymes are protein catalyst; catalyst - a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process

11. Catalyst doesn't change /\ G; only decrease potential energy level in transition state

12. Substrate - reactant that an enzyme acts on when it catalyzes a chemical reaction

13. Substrate only binds to a particular site on the enzyme to which it is attracted to; generally won't bind to isomers of the substrate; must possess compatible shape

14. Without energy, work cannot be done and life would cease to exist.

15. Activation Energy - amount of energy needed to strain and break reactants' bonds.

16. Enzymes are either tertiary or quaternary structures with complex formation.

17. Competitive inhibitors - similar to the enzyme's substrate that they are able to enter the enzymes active site and block the normal substrate from binding

18. Non-competitive inhibitors - they latch to another site on the enzymes, causing a change in the enzyme's shape

19. Non-competitive inhibitor then loses its affinity for its substrate

20. Entropy - measure of randomness or disorder in energy

Top 10: Biotechnology

1. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) requires the polymerase called Taq polymerase.  This polymerase comes from hot springs.

2. It is not until after the 3rd crycle that the desired segment of DNA is replicated solely on its own.

3. Sanger's Sequencing requires dideoxyribose nucleotides (ddNTPs)

4. The bacterial plasmid is used to insert a foreign gene as it reproduces very quickly, is easy to obtain, and because we know a lot about the plasmid and bacteria.

5.Restriction enzymes cut the phosphodiester bonds on both strands of DNA in either sticky ends or blunt ends.

6. PCR has three steps: heating, cooling, and replication

7. Southern blotting is used to transfer DNA fragments from the gel to a sheet of nitrocellulose paper.

8. Gel electrophoresis separates macromolecules

9. RFLP markers serve as genetic markers

10. Recombinant DNA is when two genes from different sources are combined. 

PCR vs. DNA Sequencing

PCR

Similarities

-Sanger's method is similar to PCR
-only requires a small part of DNA (though larger parts will still work)

Differences
-PCR is to amplify a segment of DNA, while DNA Sequencing is to map the DNA sequence
-DNA Sequencing uses dideoxyribose nucleotides
-to interpret the sequence, you must run it through gel electrophoresis