Letter to Incoming Biology Student

Hey there incoming biologists,

  Welcome to biology!  I was a freshman when I first stepped foot inside Mr. Orre's Biology class. As a freshman, I took Geometry Enriched, English 9, Spanish 2, Chinese, and obviously, biology with Mr. Orre! Outside of school, I love to spend time with my friends and family, traveling, and eating. 

    Coming into class, Mr Orre expects for you to be mature and go through the daily routine of sitting at your assigned seat and doing your Do Now in your notebook. A normal day consists of doing the Do Now, reflecting on last night's vodcast, and then going into a lab/project that relates to the vodcast or the unit. For labs, we work with our table group and once we are done, we need to reflect on it on our biology blogs. Because Mr. Orre's class is a flipped classroom, the homework consists on watching the lesson and taking notes on it in your notebook with a relate and review and also taking a small quiz on canvas. Tests consist of everything that we learned in class and in the vodcast from the unit, they are very fair because everything was in the vodcasts. The notebook is one of the most important part of the class because most of your work is in it. Over the year, you become much more independent and learn a lot about biology.

   In this class, you should never talk while Mr. Orre is speaking, for that is his biggest pet peeve. To get a good grade in the class, you must do all the vodcasts on time and always turn in things on time, especially blog posts. Homework is important for having a good grade because it is the foundation to everything we learn. To get a good grade on a test, you must go over your notes and go over the quizzes on canvas, for the questions are often quite similar. My biggest mistakes were that I did not study a lot for the test in the beginning, and that really hurts your grade, another mistake was that I did not practice enough for a presentation, which I do now, and last but not least, you should always actually watch the vodcast because you might miss some important information. After some of these mistakes, I changed what I did and it did prove very successful, such as watching the vodcasts and also studying hard for tests.

  Overall, this class would have to be a 9/10 because it forces you to be much more independent, which will help you in the future. Like other classes, though, this class will only be as good as how much effort you put into it.  I really enjoyed it because this class is very unique and also fun. Next year, I will be taking Chemistry Honours because I feel that  this class has prepared me a lot for it, work wise. In summary, this class will be your best class of your day because of how it will captivate you throughout the year, and you will learn many things through vodcast, labs, and awesome projects!
   

                                           -Baptiste

The Radish Lab

    For my 20 Time project, I decided to create an experiment, where I would be posing the question, "Does a plant grow larger in better conditions?” For the duration of the 20 Time project, I grew radishes in two different light intensities while I measured the lengths of their leaves around every two weeks. As of today, I have wrapped up my experiment and measured the final leaves and finished completing the data table. This is my doc where I kept all the data and some observations.
Overall, I was able to completely finish my lab, which also led to a conclusion that supported my hypothesis. Not only have I provided accurate data, but I have, hopefully, shown people that anyone can grow their own food at home and that it is not so complicated after all. Here are some images from the various stages of my experiment. Do not forget to check my previous 20 Time post, here is one.

 

Here are the largest leaves from each test that I measured and pictured.

Here is my data table:

	Week 0	Week 2	Week 4	Week 6	Week 8
Limited sun exposure radishes	0cm	.9cm	1.7cm	2.4cm	3.2cm
Full sun exposure radishes	0cm	1.5cm	2.5cm	3.3cm	4.1cm

Week 10	Average Length of Leaves
Minimal sun intensity	3.76cm
Maximum sun intensity	4.87cm

Week 0

Week 2

Week 4

Week 6

Week 8

Limited sun exposure radishes

0cm

.9cm

1.7cm

2.4cm

3.2cm

Full sun exposure radishes

0cm

1.5cm

2.5cm

3.3cm

4.1cm

Week 10

Average Length of Leaves

Minimal sun intensity

3.76cm

Maximum sun intensity

4.87cm

Here are the radishes in high intensity at around  2 weeks.

   After completing this project, I believe that I deserve a high grade for various reasons. First, I was able to finish my whole lab by the dead line, including always turning in everything on time, meaning the blog posts. Another reason would be that I also worked as much at home than in class on my 20 Time because I had to take care of growing plants and was also responsible for gathering the data at home and I also did a lot of research at school, so my experiment could run as smoothly back home. Overall, I not only spent 20% of class time but I also dedicated a portion of my day at home. Through these many months, I also faced many road blocks in the beginning, but I was able to quickly resolve them, so that I could get a finished product by the due date. Another important point was how I was able to execute a full lab without getting directions on how to do from a peer or teacher. I was able to apply all that I have learned over the years and combine it to produce a well thought out experiment.  Last but not least, I fulfilled my goal in 20 Time, and I also feel that I chose a project that I was really passionate about and I chose to challenge myself and ended up reaching my goals. In summary, I feel that I deserve a high grade on my 20 Time project because of my commitment, my perseverance, and also by having met the target of 20 Time, to do something that you are passionate about and to challenge yourself.

This is my final graph showing how the high light intensity clearly produced larger leaves.

Don't forget to read my 20 Time Reflection.

Pig Dissection Reflection

     For this lab, we dissected a fetal pig. The essential question was "How can a dissected pig can demonstrate the human anatomy?" This dissection relates to our current unit by this unit was about the different organ systems and the organs in anatomy. This also related to what we were doing in class because we had to find where the organs were and had to also know what their function was in the body. Because a pig is also a mammal, the dissection helped us understand the human anatomy and the importance of all the different organs. One of the best examples was how I learned more about how the digestive worked and where it was located because the one in the pig was very similar to the human one. 

    Personally, my favourite part of dissection was when we had to take the video tutorial because I liked how we had to include a media part to it because it was a new experience because all the other labs, we never did a video. I also liked it because we got to showcase all we had learned throughout the unit. 

     This was a very valuable experience because it really made me practice hands-on labs and also made my team working skills improve. It also improved my skills of teaching others of what we learned in the unit.

20 Time Individual Reflection

 This being my first 20 Time Project I have ever done, I did not really know what to expect and also how to really do it. My goal for this project was to test whether vegetables grown in better conditions actually grew bigger. I chose to do this because I have always loved gardening, so this was a perfect way to do something I enjoy but at the same time it being a project for my biology class. I also felt that it fit well with what we had learned, when we learned about photosynthesis and other things about plants. Through this project, I was trying to both create something and improve myself. In this project, I created an experiment, which then resulted in creating a result, vegetables. I also improved myself by practicing time management and also how to create a lab myself without any guidelines.

   My initial plan to reach my goal was to do a little of research into what vegetables would be suitable for my experiment. I would then go to a local plant nursery to buy their seeds and then I would plant them in two different places, with two different sun orientation. By doing this, I was hoping that the two plants would grow with different light intensity. I was then going to water the two equally on a weekly basis making sure that the other variables were the same. After a few months, I was planning that I could measure their edible parts to see which ones grew the biggest.

    As I soon found out, my plan would quickly change. One of the biggest one is that I first wanted to plant green beans, basil, and carrots. Quickly, I realized that growing green beans would not be possible. A few days later when I went to the store to buy seeds, I was surprised that  they were sold out of both basil and carrots, so I went with the next best thing, radishes. I decided ti make my lab smaller by only growing one vegetable, radishes. Not only was it one of the only seeds left, but it would also help with the time constraints because the due date was coming near. After the rough start, I feel that everything then went according to plan. I watered them every four days, I kept most variables constant, and finally the radishes were growing! When it was time to wrap things up, I realized that weighing their edible parts was not the best thing to do, for they were not fully grown. Instead, I decided to measure their leaves and average it to see which one grew the biggest. Though I finished the experiment at the end, I feel that I could prolong it by trying it again with more vegetables this time. The only difference is that I would be for a longer period and I would also have more freedom with when I finish it. By saying this, I do believe that I might want to make it a some what long term project, at least for another year, maybe.

    Another really important aspect that I got from doing this project is that I learned a ton both in content and in process skills. With the research I have done, I have learned a ton about growing plants, and I also got a lot of hands in learning with plants and how to care for them better. The biggest thing I have learned during this project has to be time management because unlike other projects in the past, I had to create it from top to bottom and also it lasted almost a whole semester. Before this, I had never done a project which lasted so long. I also learned how to be my own leader because I decided to work alone and that resulted in me having to do everything and also having to make the guidelines. If I had the possibility to do this project again, I think that I would not do anything differently because I feel that I reached my goal and finished on time. 20 Time being a project that you decide on your own, there is no wrong or right way to do this, so I feel that I did really well for my first 20 Time Project. I stayed to what my goal was and accomplished it and through the experience, I learned many new things and lessons. Overall, I feel that I did the best I could and would change a thing. I have also learned a lot bout myself during this project. I learned that I work best alone in projects, I am pretty good at managing time, and last but not least, I have found that I do enjoy gardening more than I thought I did.

   As I said before, I think that I might want to prolong my 20 Time by redoing my experiment, but this time do it with a bigger array of plants and also doing it for a longer amount of time. I might start it this new lab this summer and make it finish at the spring of 2018. A reason I would like to do this again is because I truly really enjoyed the process, and I also felt like it improved how I worked at school a lot. Overall 20 Time was a really great experience for me, and I hope that everyone would try it for themselves. Here is my work.

   

Unit 9 Reflection

    This unit was called "What On Earth Evolved?" In this unit, we learned about the taxonomy of different organisms. The first vodcast taught us the basics including the the order of classification, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, and etc... As we went further along we went deeper into each kingdom, to see what makes it up. We learned about the different domains. Within the domains we went deeper into one of the most  important one, Eukarya. In Eukarya, we learned about the main kingdoms in it including: Plantae, Animalia, Protista, and Fungus. Because of how much information was in each kingdom, we decided to focus most of our time for the kingdom Animalia. One of the main ideas was how Animalia have two different types of organisms, vertebrates (meaning with a back bone) and invertebrates (which do not have back bones). The phylum vodcast were divided into invertebrates and vertebrates. One of the most important organism we learned about in these vodcast was the Tiktaalik because this organism was the first one to come out of the water to go on land. This move then eventually led to many different land creatures, us included. This then us to learn about mammalia, the phylum we are in.
     After completing this unit, I still have some unanswered question, even with all the information we were given. I am still curious about the kingdom, Protista. We learned that it was a kingdom in which organisms, which did not fit elsewhere, were put, but I still wonder why scientist are still unable to make a categorize them differently. At the same time, I would have also enjoyed learning more about the Protistas, for I think they seem very interesting. I also felt that this unit did indeed answer some of the unanswered questions and further question from the from the Timeline lab, my reflection of that lab is here.

    Another large part of the unit was the What On Earth Evolved presentations. Everyone in the class was given an organism to research and later present to the class. I decided to go with wheat. Through this project, I learned a lot about my organism and how it helped shape the world. Through this project I was able to better my talking skills and also managing my time. I was also able to research about something that I did find interesting. I felt that I was able to manage my time pretty well in making the presentation, but on the other hand, I feel that I should have practiced the speaking part more because during the presentation I talked too fast. This then resulted in not being able to reach the time goal. Another thing that occurred that was bad was that I got very nervous when I went to talk in front of the class, which caused me to forget/miss important parts that I had memorized. Overall this was a great learning experience, not only for learning more about wheat and other organisms, but also to realize what I am not very strong at. This will definitely make me change my approach to presenting. In summary, this unit was full of interesting things both in subjects and labs/projects.

Timeline Mini-Reflection

   Overall, there have been many events in Earth's history, but there are 3 that clearly stand out. Firstly, one of the biggest event was the diversification of vascular plants. Scientist have been able to observe this because the many fossils they have found show that the more plants were around, but this also was shown with there being more oxygen in the air. This is one of the most important events because these plants caused the Earth to be more habitable and provide more suitable environments for new organisms. Another major event includes the "Cambrian Explosion," which occurred at the end of the Cambrian Era. In a short amount of time, the Earth diversified a lot because of this explosion because it caused the planet to be more suitable for some than others. This explosion is significant because it resulted in new species and wide diversity. Last but not least, the third most important event would be the arrival of primates. These groups of primates, overtime, evolved to form many species including ourselves. Without them, us, humans, would not roam this Earth, and the Earth would have looked very differently to how we know it today.

  Through this project, we were capable of visualizing the age of Earth more clearly. The timeline was  scaled to mimic the duration of billions of years. Thankfully, Earth's history is divided into eras, periods, and epochs. The eras at the beginning were very spaced out as the essentials were being created. As you got closer to modern times, the eras became smaller and smaller and denser with events and new species that changed the world. This was very shocking because we were able to realize that almost everything we know today seems to be only a split second of Earth's entire history. It also showed us how much humans in someway have impacted our Earth in just a few century, it was too small to even be drawn on the 10 meter long timeline!

    This then led me to think how much we have done in such a short amount of time. The first thing that comes up is, "is this okay to do?" Why have we been the only organisms to change the Earth so drastically in such a short amount of time and not especially in the right way. As much as we try to tell ourselves that we should stop changing the world, we still burn fossil fuels and litter our lands and ocean. As much as we depend on Earth, it seems we have have turned against it in order to have everything our way, not even thinking of the real consequences. By continuing like this, we will cause the Earth to change too much in too little time and that might lead to many disasters in the future. The timeline was a real eye opener to the problems we need to face in our modern society.

    With this fascinating project, I can not stop but have questions. The largest one is, how much longer will the planet last? Another question I have is will our actions lead to a new great extinction and will that cause the Earth, to once again, change completely and have new organisms that will be completely different than us? Even though I still have these questions, I feel that this group project has answered many others and has opened my eyes to many new things that I would have never thought about before.

On the Final Stretch

   Since my last 20 time blog post,  I have found out so far is that the plants grown with the higher light intensity have been growing faster than those grown with less light intensity. With this experiment, I have also learned a bit more about myself. I have discovered that I am quite interested in growing plants as a activity. Another thing I found about myself is that I tend to work best alone, though I already knew this, this lab just reinforced it.

   For various reasons, I have made many little tweaks to my experiment. The biggest decision I made was to change the test question from "Can one grow a plant, so that it grows bigger, without using any chemicals or GMO's?" to "Does a plant grown in better conditions bare larger vegetables?" because of the time constraints. I have also decided to not compare the weight of a vegetable from a store and mine. Instead, I chose to compare them between each other. Another change I might need to make is to compare the growth of the plants and their leaf size instead of the edible part. I have not experienced many setbacks this time.

For the next steps, I will be continuing to collect data as the plants are growing. I will also get ready to finalize my lab by unearthing them and comparing the plants. I will also need to write my conclusion, but I believe that I will do this very close to the due date, so that I can leave the plants growing for the maximum amount of time.

Unit 8 Reflection

  In unit 8, we learned about the evolution of populations as well as the constant changes that populations go through. The main themes that were taught throughout the unit included: evolution, the part variation has in evolution, the varying causes of change, why change occurs, natural selection (phenotypes included), what specific things evolve, and lastly, artificial selection. Throughout the unit, we used these themes to build on each other. We also demonstrated some of them through labs. An example of a lab includes Hunger Games Lab, which demonstrated how natural selection affected the population. By doing this, we could actually see how the phenotypes, through the genotypes that were passed done, looked more like those that were better adapted to the changing environment. This then led us into the learning of the different changes that can cause a population to separate and change, or just change all together. One of the most important concepts that was taught during the unit was how to know evolution has occurred. This can be done by vestigial structures or even fossils. Before you can learn this, you must first understand that evolution is the change of allele frequency in a population. In summary, through this unit, we were able to learn many different themes that are fundamental to biology, and we were able to understand these concept better through the many labs.

    

   After ending this lab, I would like to learn more about the ways that we can see that evolution occurred. I would like to learn more about the vestigial structures and the fossils. The biggest concept that I do not fully understand is natural selection. Why does natural selection act the ways it does, could it work any other way?

   During the past unit, we were given the ability to be more assertive and apply it to our everyday life. I have trying to do this by speaking for myself. I also try to insert my self in the group settings and contributing in it equally. Recently, we have been assigned to create a timeline in biology in groups of four. I have increased my assertiveness in the project by saying what I feel and also by equally distributing the work among my group members. In conclusion, I feel that I have increased my assertiveness over the past unit, and I plan to keep it this way.

Hunger Games Lab Analyisis

1. In this lab, we simulated a population of species in which there were three different phenotypes. Through this lab, we were able to observe how different phenotypes survived better in the environment. The three phenotypes were knucklers, which had to use their knuckles to pick up food; pinchers,which had to pick up food by pinching it; and stumpys, which had to pick the food up with their wrists. This lad was representing what occurred in an environment and natural selection because the best fitted species reproduced the most.

2.The phenotype, which was best adapted, was the pinchers. This occurred because they were able to pick up the food very quickly, which resulted in them being able to pick up the most in the least amount of time.

3.The population evolved to look more like the winners. The allele frequency was of 61% to 77% for "a," which the pinchers were heterozygous recessive. We know this because the pinchers' population boomed with having 16 of the organism out of 22 in total. This shows that the population, every year, looked more like the winners than the previous years. The population also shifted from about 50/50 at the beginning to one phenotype clearly gaining offspring.

4. Like in nature there both random things and not random things. The random things included how much food was needed to survive for a year, what type of offspring the organisms would get, and also where the food was placed in the environment. The nonrandom things include how the phenotypes picked up the food.

5.The results would not have been much different if the food was larger or smaller because the pinchers would have still eaten around the same part. Their population would have just increased faster and more steadier. If there was less food, there could have been more deaths. This is similar in nature, when there is a drought, less organisms can survive because the lack of water and food.

6. If there had been no incomplete dominance, both the stumpys and the pinchers would have grown because they would have had less competition and also more food for them to eat.

7.Natural selection and evolution are close because because of natural selection, the species has to adapt and change, and some die to leave only the best, this in return leads to evolution.

8.For stumpys, they had made a strategy to lay on the ground and pick up all the food below them. The stumpys also became more of a group by working together, which led to a boom in their population. In nature, some animals adapt to have better skills and some also decide to live in groups and go searching for food together. This increases the probability of survival.

9.In evolution, almost all the organisms evolve to survive better, but some as a result are able to reproduce the most and greatly enlarge their population, while some die because of the competition and other factors.

10.I still have some questions concerning this lab. Firstly, did this lab very accurately depict what happens in most environments, or this is just a case that can only be seen in some environments? Last but not least, does evolution occur everywhere in the world?

Growing Your Own Food

  As you know, in my biology class, we have been working on 20 time projects. For my 20 time project, I decided to grow a "vegetable garden." During the past weeks, I have faced many different setbacks. I first had to choose what types of plants I was going to grow. I decided to plant carrots and radishes. I had to choose those, for I have less time than I thought I had to grow these vegetable and make them bare vegetable. Another setback, I have faced, was that because of this weather, I have not been able to plant the seeds until about a week ago. This had to be done because of the wet weather and also the fact that it was not spring yet and that there was still a bit of frost in the mornings. If I had grown them then, they would have most likely died. Basically, so far, I have planted the seeds in pots in different places facing different directions. The first is faced south, which will give it the most sunshine, and I placed the other pot facing west. I do expect that the plants facing south will grow faster and maybe, hopefully, larger. In conclusion, I have made quite a lot of progress since the last blog post, even though I was planning to be more ahead, but the climate made it impossible.

Unit 7 Reflection

  In Unit 7, my class and I learned about ecology, which is the study of interactions between organisms and their environment. In an environment, there are both biotic, meaning all living things, and abiotic factors, meaning non living things such as wind or rain. There are many different levels of organization, it fist starts with an organism, then comes its population, then community, also an ecosystem, then comes the biome, and lastly, there is the biosphere. In the ecosystem, there are both producers, plants, and consumers, organisms that get food from producers. We are able to see the energy pass through the ecosystem with food chains and food webs. In a food chain, there are five different labels, including primary producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer, and quaternary consumers. A food web is more accurate than a food chain because most animals eat an array of different foods. You can also see the energy being transferred by using an energy pyramid. For every level of the pyramid, 90% of the energy is lost as waste. Lastly, the most important thing we learned about was about Ecosystem Health. In an ecosystem, there are many different types of diversity from genetic diversity to ecosystem diversity. Though there is a huge amount of diversity throughout the world, much of it is on the verge of becoming extinct. In the world, about 24% of mammals are threatened with extinction, yet the most affected ones are the amphibians with 41%. There are many cause of extinction including habitat loss and over exploitation.

    After finishing this unit, I am interested in learning more about how energy travels through the ecosystems and all the different cycles, like the carbon cycle. The only unanswered question that remains is, are humans the ones to blame for all of this extinction?


   Going off of the Ecosystem Health, we were assigned to do a conservation ecology project with our group partners. Through this project, not only did we become more educated on the problems some ecosystems are facing, but we also learned how to work better in a team. Through this project, I learned about many different conflicts and threats that real life ecosystems face. This project really opened my eyes to many different threats in my ecosystem, the Madagascar rainforest. My collaboration with my partners went very well, for we all completed the tasks on time, and I feel that we communicated very well. Nothing really went wrong in our project except for that we were shocked how hard it was to create a vodcast. In my group, I feel that we were all assertive and spoke equally. We all respected each other's opinion and input. After completing this project, I feel that I should ad to my goals, that I should try to be assertive during every class and the projects I will do this semester in all my classes, and also in the future. I could become more assertive by speaking loudly and clearly stating my opinion. I should also use "I" statements instead of "you" statements.

My 20 Time Project

  In my biology class, we have decided to do a 20 Time project. A 20 Time can be a project or anything that requires one to learn about a subject that interests them and find out more about it. The name of it comes from how you should spend around 20% of your class time to work on your project. A 20 Time project has to interest you, for you will have a couple of months to achieve your goal of answering the question you have asked yourself.
  For my 20 Time, I have decided to create an experiment. The question I have made is, " Can one grow a plant, so that it grows bigger, without using any chemicals or GMO's?" I chose to perform this experiment because ever since we learned in Biology that the only real way to fight hunger is by using transgenic organism, but I want to test whether you can plant some plants in different conditions that might result in larger quantities of food being created. This experiment will answer my essential question by showing be that may be plants do grow as big if you place them in the best conditions, than the plants that are transgenic. Because we have a couple of months to accomplish this project, I have many goals. My first goal is to find out what are some of the best conditions I could expose the plants to, that can be reproduced around the world. Another goal of mine is to keep the plants alive by watering them accordingly and caring for them. My last goal is to compare the size of a plant I grew to one that was transgenic, that we can find at a supermarket. I will measure my progress with the growth of the plants and the data I will collect throughout the experiment. My plan moving forward is to first start with planting the plants that I want to plant, and I also plan to use some of my time of the day for this experiment until the due date of the project for my biology class. In summary, I will be doing a 20 Time project for the next months in my biology class.

Unit 6 Reflection

       

         In this unit, we studied biotechnology, which also included bioethics. Biotechnology is the study of  manipulating genes and DNA to benefit the world in a good way. Bioethics is the study of what is right or wrong in biotechnology, an example of it might be, "does a clone have the same rights a a normal human being?" We also learned that DNA could be recombined and then inserted into other organisms through a plasmid, this might bring a ability to an organism that it did not have. The new organism will treat the inserted DNA as its own gene and will create the proteins it instructs to. We also learned about PCR and gel electrophoresis. This we used to learn how to know the length of a DNA strand and how to separate different DNA.  We also learned about DNA sequencing, which is used all over the world. With this technology, we can sequence all of the humans' DNA sequences, which could help us detect different diseases or disorders. In order to make a clone, PCR is needed. For the gel electrophoresis, you need to put the tester DNA in little wells as well as know DNA samples, which will later be used to compare and measure.  It can be used for forensics, to find who has the specific fingerprints.

        During this unit, we performed two main experiments. The first one was the Candy Electrophoresis Lab (http://baptistebiology.blogspot.com/2017/01/candy-electrophoresis-lab.html), in which we made our own gel and tested the different colour dyes found in candy. We tested the dyes in m&m's, Reeses, Skittles, and Mike n Ike. We first had to form the gel and extract the samples we needed from the candy. We then placed them in the wells with the known colour dyes. Through this experiment, we learned about how to use gel electrophoresis and we also learned that many of the dyes used in candy are not very good. This taught us how to measure DNA, which coud be used in the real world for forensics. The other experiment was the pGLO lab. This lab taught us how to in real life insert and change an organism, the organism was e coli. We first had to make one of the samples glow under the UV light. We achieved this by adding arabinose. We also had to make a controlled sample in which there was no bacteria. We observed that the bacteria started to form large colonies. We were able to see the affect of each chemical. This lab also helped us see how genetically changing an organism looked like using biotechnology. Here is a link to the pGLO lab: http://baptistebiology.blogspot.com/2017/01/pglo-lab.html
  After learning about this unit, I am interested in knowing more about what is the extent of what you can change an organism into. Can you make one completely change and make it have special abilities that can not be found naturally? Ending this unit, I have an unanswered question of whether the technology in the movie GATTACA is actually a futuristic world or whether it is actually only several years away. Does biotechnology actually improve our lives significantly or is it just another way to change things in nature but truly, it does not directly affect many people.

    At the beginning of the new semester, we were assigned to make New Year's Goals. My goal was to be able to study more productively and as a result succeed on tests. To this day, I do not yet know the outcome of my attempt to achieve my goal, for we have not yet had a test in biology. I can say though that I have started to study for the upcoming test for this ending unit and that I have been spending my time more wisely and have really used the study ways that Mr. Orre talked about before the finals of the last semester. I do hope that my progress towards my goal result in me achieving my goal and having better study skills. I will just have to see the results once I know how I did on the upcoming test.

pGLO Lab

Plate Number of Colonies Color of colonies under room light Color of colonies under   UV light - pGLO LB About 19 About 20 none - pGLO LB/amp none none none + pGLO LB/amp About 20 About 19 none + pGLO LB/amp/ara At least 55 At least 60 At least 45

The new traits include the bacteria being able to glow and another trait was them growing into colonies. I would estimate about 65 colonies, for the ones that lit up with UV light, there were about 50 colonies. There were more colonies when the UV was not on. Arabinose’s role was to allow the bacteria to glow under the UV light. The glow was a neon green. GFP has been used to make cancer cells glow green in order to see the amount and where the cancer cells are. Also to see the cancer cells spread in a translucent skin. In science, it is also used in biosensors, which can sense by sensing the pH or ion level in a thing, and it displaying the results in what colour the protein glows. Scientists have also recently used it to colour animals and other organisms. Another application of genetic engineering would be to test specific genes and cells to see their direct outcome and effects in different organisms.

Candy Electrophoresis Lab

1) We could not analyze the data, for as we went to an assembly, the teacher directed us to keeping the current on, which then resulted in the DNA moving off the gel. By analyzing some other groups gel, which also ran for too long, put some remained, we observed that the red became pink. Because this is not ours, we can not be sure of where the dyes were placed in the gel originally. We could also observe that all the dyes and the standard dyes moved at the same speed, meaning they were at the same place.

2) The Fast Green FCF will go as fast the dye found in Skittles, for the Skittles went the farthest and was green and the name of that dye is Fast Green FCF. We also can think that Citrus Red 2 will go as fast as the Mike n Ike, for those are the same colour.

3) They might put dyes into dog food, so that the dog owner might be more attracted into buying a dog food that is not just brown and might show that it has vegetables or other ingredients.

5) The size of the DNA and the amount of time will affect how far it travels during the experiment. The longer DNA, the less it will go far. Time will let them move the farthest they can.

6) The electrical current helps it move through the gel. They are attracted to the other side so they move.

7) Electricity is the component that causes the DNA to make groups by their size. Because they are repelled the negative charge, the DNA starts its way to the other side. But because the shorter DNA moves quickest, it goes farther, so each length goes a certain distance which can be compared to know DNA.

8) The DNA with the weight of 600 daltons will move faster, for it is smaller meaning it will be able to move the farthest. 5,000 daltons will move the least far, for because of its weight, it will travel very slowly towards the positive charge. From farthest to closest, 600 daltons, 1,000 dlatons, 2,000 daltons, and then 5,000 daltons.

Here is the experiment of the other group that worked.

Second Semester Goals

  My first goal, specifically for Biology class, will be to study for tests earlier and studying more proactively. I will accomplish this goal by starting to study well before the day of the test. I will also study more proactively by studying the main concepts, but go more in depth in the topics, I may have not understood as well as the others. I will also evenly space the amount of time studying throughout the days, such as 30 minutes a day. I will also try to get a better sleep prior to the day of the test. By doing this, not only will I better my studying skills, but I will also do better on test, but most importantly I will better remember the material being taught, even after the unit has ended.

   My second goal, which is broader, will be to not procrastinate on work and project given at school. I will achieve this goal by starting to accomplish the work when it is first given. I will lay out the work over the days, if I an extended period of time, such as chunks of 30-45 minutes of working on it. If it is just work due in a couple of days later, I will try to start it in class or at school, so once I come home, I will have less work to do, and ultimately finish the work in that day. By accomplishing this goal, I will stop being a procrastinator and will have good habits to when I go to college and even after that.