More Molecular Biology

This week we learned about biological macro-molecules, we learned about how they formed, what they did and how they function. We learned about how they need to be in specific structures and how they achieve these necessary structures. The plants have shown no sign of change yet, which is to be expected. We also did […]

Biochemistry, The Structures For Life

This week we began learning about Biological Molecules and how they form together and how they bond. The plants we are growing have finally flowered so we can begin breeding them to try and get specific results. I believe that the class decided on attempting to make the tallest plant possible, by breeding only exceptionally […]

How Selective Events Effect Populations

This week we did more work with genetics and how alleles are expected to flow when populations are under certain influences. For instance we did a lab where pairs where randomly made and the effects ranged from homologous recessive dying 100% of the time, to homologous recessive having a 50/50 chance of survival. This resulted […]

Alleles And Hardy Weinberg

This week we did lots of number crunching with calculating allele distribution in populations. Most of these where mock populations but we did talk about how sickle-cell anemia and malaria is related. The main concept is that if you are heterozygous for sickle-cell anemia you have an advantage when fighting off malaria, heteroygous simply means […]

Common Ancestors And Genetic Sequencing

This week we learned about how after the initial creation of life, how it progressed and changed and became what it is today. We learned about how to read a phylogenetic tree and how the things on the tree relate to one another. We also learned how genetic sequences are used to see how related two […]

The Origin Of Life

The origin of life has several promising hypothesis on how life came to be on earth. With the RNA world theory the idea is that RNA kept randomly forming pairs and one of those pairs was able to replicate and then replicated in a exponential function. This video explains the RNA world hypothesis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1xnYFCZ9Yg&t=11s

Reflecting Upon Natural Selection

Having taken biology courses in the past I have a pretty strong understating of natural selection and how it works. The main conclusion that this week brought me too was that evolution can happen faster than one would think. Both the finches and the mice we heard about adapted in a very short amount of […]

This Weird Plant And Radial Symmetry

This plant is a display of radial symmetry because it all radiates out of one center point and is the same on all sides

Birds And Biological Magnification

Biological magnification is the idea that things like mercury and other heavy metals and toxins become more concentrated the further up the food-chain you go. This bird is most likely somewhere in the middle of the spectrum for toxicity. This is because it is a mid level predator and the higher up you go the […]

Cuticle Layer Of A Plant

This plant most likely has a cuticle layer. This layer is like a waxy waterproofing layer that protects the plant from the elements. It works like a think finish over the plant as one extra layer of protection.