Life's a Test

Honors Biology Blog

Life's a Test

So...

We just took our fourth test of they year...

and it went pretty well...

But...

Apparently we have another test next Friday...

and an enormous assignment due...

But it will be break in less than two weeks...

Genetics Test Review

Honors Biology Blog

Genetics Test Review Day

There is not very much to talk about that has not been discussed in my previous blog. Today in class we took a short quiz and then spent the majority of the class reviewing for the test. One concept that was clarified for me was sex-linked genes.

Say for example that a female alien with pink eyes is mated with a male alien with green eyes and we are to determine the offspring. (Pink eyes are X dominant). How would we solve this?

First, we would put the female on top of the problem, which would be XPXP and the male on the bottom would be XpY.

We would then solve the problem and find the offspring to be XPXp, XPxp, XPY, and XPY. 

I feel very prepared for the test tomorrow and am excited for what the future holds.

Research Labs

Honors Biology Blog

Research Lab

Today in class we continued our studies of genetics and advanced onto something that none of us had though of before...

Co-Dominance 

This is the first time that we have had to do problems involving traits that are not recessive and dominant to each other, rather the traits are co-dominant and can both show in the offspring. The example that Mr. Quick used to explain this unusual concept to us was Labrador Retrievers. The multiple shades of labs that are available on the market of dogs are largely due to co-dominant traits. This co-dominance allows for there to be white labs, chocolate labs, brown labs, black labs, and even silver labs.

But how does this happen?

A co-dominant trait occurs when there is a condition in which both alleles for a gene are expressed when present. This occurrence can be referred to as the "blending" of traits; however, there are other examples of alleles not solely being dominant or recessive.

Examples

Co-Dominace - Red X White = White/Red Spots

Incomplete Dominance - Red X White = Pink

Conclusion

There is still a lot to be learned about co-dominance in genetics, which we will cover next class. In the meantime, enjoy this beautiful specimen known as a Silver Lab!

(My Grandma has one named Suzy Q)

I Should Have Done this Blog before Break...

Honors Biology Blog

Meiosis

Today in class in order to better understand the process of meiosis we used popsicles sticks to represent the genes that carry the different traits. We then performed the process of meiosis with the popsicles sticks and thus understood the process much better. 

Two Trait Crosses

We also tackled genetics problems involving 2 Traits. Mr. Quick taught us two different ways to do the problem. One of the ways is often used by Mr. Fitz; however, I found this way to be very confusing, so I stuck with the normal ways of doing the problem. All in all, if I had to sum up this class I would have to say that we covered a lot of material, but I feel as though I gained a solid understanding of most of it!

I really should have done this blog before break...

My bad...

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