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

PCR vs. Vector Cloning

PCR

VC

Purpose
PCR- to amplify a piece of DNA in small amount of time
Vector Cloning- to replicate the plasmid containing the recombinant DNA

Application
PCR- often used by forensic scientists when there are not a lot of DNA samples
VC- to insert a specific foreign gene into an organism

Requirement
PCR- DNA segment
VC- plasmid, bacterium, and recombinant DNA

Process
PCR- a three step cycle of heating, cooling, then replicating
VC- gene is inserted into the plasmid, which is placed back into bacterium where it will replicate with the recombinant plasmid

Top 10: Genetics

1. DNA and RNA are replicated, transcript-ed and translated from 5' to 3'

2.When DNA is replicated, it is done by semi conservative replication.  This meaning that the new daughter molecule will have one newly made strand and an old strand.  Watson and Crick made up this model.

3. After the introns are spliced out of the premRNA, the 5' end is capped with the "5' cap" and the 3' end is called with the "polyAtail".  This is to protect the mRNA from hydrolytic enzymes.

4. The wobble positions exists as many amino acids have more than one codon.  For example, UUU and UUC both code for Phe.  Therefore, the third base of the codon and anticodon have more than one option.  

The third base are blue, which are wobble base pairs.

5. The promotor in transcription is the 5TATA3 and the terminator is AAUAA.

6. Translation is initiated at 5'AUG3' and terminated with either UAA, UAG, or UGA.

7. Spliceosomes are made up of snRNPS (protein) and snRNA (RNA nucleotides)

8. There are always three parts in replication, transcription, and translation: Initiation, Elongation, and Termination.

9. Purines have two rings and are adenine and guanine.  Pyrimidines have one ring and are thymine and cytosine.  Purines are therefore more stable because they have two rings.

10.Watson deduced the width of the helix and the spacing between the bases.

Reflection: Deaf By Design

I had done a project on gene ethics in Philosophy last year and I had been aware of our advancement in choosing what we want in our children but it wasn't until this presentation that I realized another side of our world.  I never thought that people would choose to want a deaf child so badly, I suppose it's because society teaches us that hearing children are "healthy" and "normal".  Nonetheless, during the discussions, I realized that it's just another language: we communicate with our voice while they communicate with sign language.

Mr. Chung spoke of scenarios where if everyone suddenly couldn't hear one day, those who were deaf by design would live longer than the rest of us because they would be more fit than us to survive.  I agree that under those circumstances it would be good to have a child who knew how to sign.  However, that's the environment that we presently live in.  Our world is full of if's and's and but's, and that may happen but presently, majority of the world communicates by talking to each other. If I had a child who was born deaf, I would probably have them get a Cochler implant.  As the mother in the video said, you have to give your child what's best for them.  And in today's society right now, the ability to hear is what is best.

Review: Grade 11 Genetics

Each person is made up of different traits.  Some people have brown eyes while some have green.  Some people may have blonde hair while others may not.  A child's traits are determined through their parent's genetic makeup.

Alleles are different forms of the same gene or trait.  For the trait of eye colour, there are green eyes, blue eyes, hazel eyes, and brown eyes; all these colours have their own allele.  However, certain traits are dominant over other traits.  For example, brown eyes are dominant to blue eyes.  Therefore, to have brown eyes, an individual would only need one allele for it; whereas with blue eyes, the individual must have both alleles.

We can find the possibly genotype (combination of alleles) and phenotype (physical traits) by using the Punnett Square.  With Gregor Mendel's technique of the Punnett Square, we can find the possible characteristics of two individuals' offspring.

Here are two other forms of inheritance:

Incomplete dominance - A third phenotype is created with one allele affects the second allele.  For example, a  father with straight hair and a mother with curly hair have a daughter with wavy hair.

Codominance - Both phenotypes are expressed when two alleles are equally dominant.  For example, a black cat and a tan cat would make a kitten with black fur and tan fur.