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...

Survival of the Sickest Chapter 6 Summary

Survival of the Sickest

Chapter 6

READING ASSESSMENT

This chapter of Survival of the Sickest begins by talking about Edward Jenner who was the first person to successfully discover a vaccine for a dangerous disease. The chapter then continues to discuss how humans are initially formed with only one cell, which is the product of a sperm cell and an egg cell. The chromosomes within the cells carry the instructions on how to build us. 

The chapter then explains how only 3% of DNA actually carries instructions on how to build us, while the other 97% does not do anything. Scientists originally assumed this DNA was "junk" and ignored it completely until the past couple of decades. Scientists then discovered that this " junk" DNA actually carried jumping genes and was related to viruses. These viruses turned out to be retroviruses. It was then believed that jumping genes actually descended from retroviruses and that are genomes have been modified by one particular retrovirus that made it easier for us to infected by other retroviruses. Therefore,  this "junk" DNA actually provided us with the code for our evolution from our primate ancestors. 

The chapter also talked about mutations within genes. The potential for evolution initially occurs when a mutation happens during the reproductive process of an organism. The effects of mutations are usually negative to the organism; however, they can prove to be beneficial. By studying mutations, scientists also discovered that instead of having 100,000+ genes, we actually have around 25,000 genes that serve multiple purposes and can be reshuffled with other genes.

The chapter also debunked rumors about inherited acquired traits and further explained jumping genes, which I talked about earlier in the summary. The chapter also discussed the genome's ability to gamble on mutation when survival situations became drastic. By gambling on mutation, the genome could end up creating a much stronger and better adapted organism that could possibly survive instead of die. There was also discussion of the development of antibodies and how once they are acquired they remain with the body and help to fight off future diseases.

This was a very interesting and complex chapter of Survival of the Sickest. The main focus of the chapter was genes and their different functions within an organism. 

"From Atoms to Traits" Blog

"From Atoms to Traits" Reflection

Significance of Mendel

Mendel was an Austrian monk who, through breeding different pea plants, managed to clarify the confusion about blending inheritance. His experiments proved that although different morphological differences occurred among the different pea plants, these traits were not entirely gone because they could reappear in later generations. He also noticed that offspring of the different plants usually resembled one of the parents in particular. Mendel's experiments ultimately altered the previous perception of how heritable variants occurred.

Drawing of DNA and Who Discovered It

Watson and Crick DNA Model 

as Drawn by Adam John Holliday

Five Examples of DNA Variation

Point Mutation- A single base-pair change occurs. This mutation inactivates the gene for signaling a molecule that regulates muscle growth.

Insertion- An intruding DNA element disables a gene that is necessary for starch synthesis. The water and sugar levels of the organism are thus altered.

Gene Copy Number- Entire cells are capable of being wrongly duplicated during cell division, which leads to differences between species that result in variation.

Duplication- Homopolymers within sequences are highly prone to duplication errors. These homopolymers being copied can lead to different coloration among organisms.

Regulatory Changes- Mutations in the DNA that control when and where genes are activated can lead to major deformations of an organism.

Evo-Devo

Evo-Devo is a biological field that analyzes the differences in the developmental processes of organisms in order to show the ancestral relationships between them.

Connection between Lactose Intolerance and Human Migration

The ability to digest milk after infancy was an unnecessary trait that hunter-gatherers didn't need to have thousands of years ago. The ability to digest in milk would have been an uncommon and abnormal trait that very few individuals would have possessed. Therefore, as the small population that had this abnormal trait would eventually migrate to different areas and pass this trait onto future generations. For this reason, the populations that were related to these "unusual" ancestors will be lactose tolerant while other population will generally be lactose intolerant.

Honors Bio Blog 16/69 (Does Race Exist)

I very foolishly typed this up and printed it the night before...
Here it is on my blog...

Does Race Exist?

The reading that I did last night presented some very interesting and persuasive arguments. The primary argument that was in the document was that humans are not necessarily divided into the "races"that we previously assumed. In fact, both our divisions and whom we are more closely related to are extremely different than what we had previously thought. For example, the main indicators that humans currently use to determine which race they and others belong to are usually the skin colors and facial features of a person. These assumptions of race based off of these two minor codes in our genes prove to be extremely inaccurate indicators. 

If we hope to acheive an accurate understanding of whom we are more closely related to and which "race" we truly belong to we will have to dive deep into our genetics. Researchers often use small strands of DNA known as Alus, which are extremely unusual because they serve no purpose but to randomly copy themselves into human DNA in random places. The Alus can be used to identify how closely related humans are to one another. Essentially, although on the surface it may appear that two people look very similar and therefore must be the same "race", they can actually be more unrelated than two people who look extremely similar to each other. Human beings incorrectly define "races" based off of different visisble physical characteristics; however, when humans are examined at a much more microscopic level the lines between different "races" become blurred. That's right! We are talking about blurred lines!