So Ironic

Chapter 1 of Survival of the Sickest

What comes to mind when iron is mentioned?

Do you think of ironing clothes?

People mining iron?

Minecraft?

The iron in your body?

Well, the primary focus of Chapter 1 of the Survival of the Sickest was the iron in your body. This chapter explored both the benefits and the non-benefits of having iron in our bodies. The chapter began by talking about some dude who could had some freaky disease that caused his body to think that it needed more iron when it actually did not. This led to him getting poisoning from an excess of iron, which jacked up his metabolism. 

The chapter also mentioned the effects that iron has on bacteria. Iron allows bacteria to thrive. I mean, that stuff will grow like crazy in iron. Like, freakin' crazy growth. That's why babies are not supposed to consume that much iron. The bacteria could completely take over the baby's young body if an abundance of iron is present. There was also mention of the Black Death and how it affected men the most. This is because men had the most iron in their bodies. Women, children, and people with iron deficiencies were totally fine because they did not have enough iron in their bodies to contract the disease.

This connects to genetics because the passing down of the disease of hemochromatosis actually saved lives during the Black death and ties into issues of people who have problems pumping iron (through their veins that is...).

Snorkity Snorkity Snorks

Today was a very entertaining day in Honors Biology because we accomplished so many things. We further reviewed the process of protein synthesis and checked again to see if our pGLO was glowing. Sadly for Bob and I, we failed to make it glow, so we will forever be wandering this world in the dark ;(

Also, we did a very entertining activity where, by examining specific Snork DNA, were able to figure out what the Snork would like based off of the physical traits that the genes would produce. 

Today was a good day in class :)

Here is a picture of my Snorkity Snork 

Out of Clever Titles...

Applying What I Read to What I See

This very psychedelic design of this flower can be explained by Chapter 4 of Survival of the Sickest. This chapter talked about mutations and "jumping" genes. This flower has clearly had some form of mutation within it's genetic code because off the hippie-trippy color scheme. This mutation could have been caused by selective breeding performed by a flower breeder or similar effects could have been achieved through years of the flower surviving whether or not this mutation is actually beneficial to the flower. It has probably taken countless generations of flowers for this flower to get the mutation that it has now.

Using what I learned from reading Chapter 3 of Your Inner Fish, I can understand exactly what happened to this horrifically "freaky" looking hand. The extra digits were likely caused by an excess of skin cells, caused by too much of the ZPA gene. This overall excess of skin cells, led to the development of the extra digits that would likely be deemed "freakish" by modern society; however, this young mutant could possibly possess an extreme advantage over the rest of us. In my humble opinion, I believe that he should be...

...such a clever X-Men reference

Chicken Embryos for the Win

Your Inner Fish

Chapter 3 Summary 

In a nutshell, the Chapter 3 of Your Inner Fish explored what aspects of DNA impact development of organisms. The "inner fish" referenced in the title that Tabin's research ended up finding was not what he had previously expected during his initial experiments. He instead found that the "inner fish" lies in the biological tools that are responsible for the construction of fins. All appendages, regardless of what they are related to, are built by very similar types of genes. 

What does this mean...?

This discovery that Tabin's research group found proved that the transition from fish fins to limbs didn't evolve the origin of new DNA, rather it involved the usage of ancient DNA. 

What else...?

Tabin's research on flies and chickens also helped the world to gain a better understanding of human birth defects.

Connection to what we are doing...

Similar to the experiments that Tabin's posse performed, we are also messing with the development of bacteria. We are attempting to make our pGlo glow in the dark. By changing certain parts of the bacteria as it develops, we are hoping that the pGlo will glow after the changes have been made to it.
The experiments that we are performing are on a much smaller scale; (we are not giving chickens deformed wings or building backwards flies) however, the experiments are the same basic concept that Tabin's posse explored. 

Here is a lovely picture of a Chicken Embryo 

just for kicks...