Round Up: November 30

After our unit on cell signaling, Team AP Bio jumped right into our next season: Genetics. We all flashed back to Honors Bio with a review of Mendel's Pea Plants. After relearning Punnett Squares, we went into depth on DNA Replication.

Helicase, topoisomerase, and ligase: which is which? Learning about the process of DNA Replication was definitely a review of enzymes for all of us. 

The process of DNA replication.

Finally, we spent an entire hour discussing our assignments for the last unit of this semester. Family Medical History, DNA Extraction, and Genetic Symposiums, oh my! Instead of creating a family tree with pictures and shakily-written names, just as we did in elementary school, we were told to create a family tree, including any medical afflictions. 

The beginning of my family medical history

"Go crazy," we were told. Well, not really, but essentially. Anything from glasses or freckles, to anemia or cancer. Over three generations, what could we possibly find in our medical history? Any trends? I, myself, was already planning my medical history out. I could tell that everyone else was, too, because Bianca had started writing things down and Julia was animatedly discussing possibilities with Mrs. Girard and with me.

This was the perfect project for Thanksgiving - as we all spend time with our families, we can connect and learn more about who we are by discussing our medical past. And we can all be thankful for the modern technologies which have allowed all of us to exist today. 

The DNA I extracted.

On top of the family medical history, we were informed of an extra credit opportunity: DNA extraction. With a strawberry (or other piece of fruit), dish soap, and alcohol, anyone can extract the gloop which is DNA. Julia completed this project with her sisters, Monica stuck to strawberries, Isabelle used a banana, and I tried out different fruits before concluding that the strawberry worked best. You can see my extraction here. 

Works Cited

DNA Replication. Digital image. Wikipedia. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 13 May 2016.

Round Up: Learning is Fun!

The past few weeks of school my classmates and I studied cell signaling, mitosis and meiosis. We conducted a case study called, My Dog is Broken, trying to solve the mystery of what caused the dog to cease to have an erection. The case study showed the importance of the entire process of signaling working together to pass the response to the final destination. If one part of the signal is not working properly the entire signal will not be able to perform its function 

Overview of Cell Signaling                                Reece, Jane B., and Lisa A. Urry. Campbell Biology. Tenth ed. 2011. Print.

      Before the chapter test, we were assigned a project on the topic of meiosis. The rules were, the project must be in video format and the process of meiosis had to be seen dividing and crossing over. The rest was up to our creativity. I enjoyed the project because of the creativity needed and accessibility of the videos. My classmates and I were able to watch each others videos and they were a great review before the test. My favorite activity by far was the mitosis animal cell quiz. When you hear  quiz your brain automatically freaks out, but this was not a usual quiz. The first part of the quiz was creating each step of mitosis in an animal cell using arts and craft supply. There was really not limit to what could be produced, but it had to be in a 90-minute period of time. My classmates and I each chose one step of mitosis to complete. We had to work together cohesively to figure out what object was going to be used for the nucleus, the chromosomes, the spindle fibers, and so on. I had fun communicating and discussing what would work best with each aspect of mitosis. Since I am a visual learner, being able to see visually and in person what mitosis looks like (roughly) made the process so much easier to understand. We were having so much fun constructing our animal cells the time flew. By the end of class everyone was frantically gluing pieces. Luckily everyone finished before the bell rang. 

The great artwork AP Bio created. Mitosis in animal cells, minus a few chromosomes that fell off.

 The next day, after all the glue was dried, Team AP Bio got back together and had to explain what was happening in the different steps of mitosis while Mrs. Girard was filming us.  Being put on the spot was good practice for the test, because you have to answer questions quickly. Overall, I had a great time while at the same time learning more about the different processes of living organisms. When education is enjoyable it doesn't even seem like you are learning. It's magic!

 Here is the video Christine and I created!
https://youtu.be/bYnlM69QXig
  

Featured Image:  Bost, Kim. "Party in the Air." Flickr. Yahoo!, 2 June 2008. Web. 25 Nov. 2015. <https://www.flickr.com/photos/bost/2545318262>.

Round Up: It's Not Easy Being Green

For the past few weeks, Team AP Bio has been learning about the process of photosynthesis with a little review of cellular respiration mixed in.  Cells with mitochondria already have to run many processes simultaneously in order to keep up cellular respiration.  The cells of photosynthetic organisms have the extra challenge of adding the processes within photosynthesis to the mix.  That is a lot to juggle!

Noor. Kermit Drawing. Digital image. Sketchport. Sketchport, 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.

Our foray into photosynthesis included two labs, an independent project, and even a video game, but my favorite activity was the chromatography lab.  My classmates and I gathered leaves from around Notre Dame’s campus.  We used chromatography techniques to separate various pigments found in the thylakoid membrane within the leaves’ chloroplasts.  Studying different pigments leads to knowledge of the types of light that plants grow best under.  Scientists can use chromatography to make agriculture more efficient! The most common pigments we found were chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b, which reflect green light.   Other pigments included xanthophyll (yellow), carotenoids (orange), and anthocyanin (red and purple).  Because both chlorophyll reflects green light, we were able to infer that the plants with high levels of chlorophyll grew best under red and blue light.  When I think of a leaf, the first word that comes to my mind is green, but now all I can only think of the colorful pigments spread out on the chromatography strips.  It is amazing how many colors a leaf can hide under its green exterior.

Plant Pigment Chromatography. Digital image. Pearson. Pearson Education, Inc., n.d. Web. 2015.

The other activity that stood out was the test review.  Normally I find review terribly boring because it usually entails a lecture, but Mrs. Girard threw us a curveball. We split into two teams and created board games that covered both cellular respiration and photosynthesis.  My team designed a game inspired by baseball and named “Three Strikes, You’re Dead.”  As a kinetic learner, I loved getting crafty and using my hands to physically create the game.  It recalling the material spatially in my head much easier.  Also, I noticed that many of the questions that my team wrote for game were similar to those on the test.  Writing our own questions made us stop and think which information would be crucial to know in terms of the big picture.  As a cherry on top, we spent whole block trying each other’s games out.  Overall making the board game aided my memory, made my studying more efficient, and was enjoyable to both play and make.  I really hope we get to do something similar in the future.

A picture of us playing the board games that was taken from Mrs. Girard’s twitter.