MItosis and Meiosis

The activity that I performed for mitosis and meiosis was not quite as fun as the candy activity that the rest of the class did. Although, the activity was still a very good representation of the process of mitosis and meiosis. In my activity I used different colored sheets of paper for my activity. There were different colors of paper each represented by a letting (T,A, G, C). Within the letters the T paired with an A and a G paired with a C. This process was representing cells pairing together and splitting in the process of duplication. 

In this project not only taught me more about mitosis and meiosis but also made it easier for me to remember the information by making it happen myself, on the table in front of me. Mitosis is the simple duplication of a cell and its parts. It duplicates its DNA into two new cells that are called daughter cells that of course, have the same genetic code. The main idea of this is that you have one cell to start they split and you get two that are the same. The process of this happening is brought through the 5 phases called prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, and interphase.

In meiosis , there are two divisions as where in mitosis  there is one division. Now, in mitosis, four cells are created but they one receive half of the DNA needed by a cell. Meiosis takes place when its time to reproduce an organism. As you some say there is meiosis one and meiosis two, really this is just the phases of prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase and interphase happening twice.

Mitosis and meiosis are the same in the fact that the both go through the process of the five stages and they are different because mitosis goes through the five stages once to create one duplicate and meiosis goes through it twice to create four new ones which contain half the DNA and are not necessarily functioning cells.  

Easily Adapted to Candy Land

In class we broke into our groups and were instructed to create an environment of any kind and name its form of "water", temperature, air type, etc. Next we passed our environments onto the next group where they created organisms to live within our environment and draw them out.
 The environment that my group designed was based off of what you might imagine candy land to be. The water was made out of orange Hawaiian punch, the geosphere would include sprinkle sand, oreo crumbles and rock candy. The hydrosphere is clear air that smells like delicious chocolate with a stable temperature of 68 degrees F year round. The "Hawaiian Ocean" floor consists of nothing but candy canes.
The organisms that the other group designed to live in our environment were a gumdrop tree, a snicker tree and a soup patch kid shrub to serve as producers. Next they created a peep, a ginger bread man, and a chocolate bunny that were primary consumers and lastly was a gingerbread man who was the secondary consumer. These yummy creatures are all adapted well to the environment because they are all yummy treats that involve the same type of needs.
Our partner group also designed a rather creative environment. The environment that they created is what I pictured to be all green and full of life. The environment was rich in oxygen and full of water. It had clear water and a  moderate temperature that was fitting for all life living within. They even added a beautiful touch of multiple waterfalls and mountains. My group had the  job of creating organisms to live within this environment. We first created "raw raw" which grows in the water, "mossimo" which only needs two days of sun and furnsilla. These three plants are our primary producers. Our primary consumers were the bazoo which is basically a mix between a zebra and a moose which fed mostly off of the fernsilla and the mossimo and sam who lives in the clear fresh water and feeds off of the plant raw raw. Serving ad our secondary consumer is a "saber" who eats sam and bazoo. All of these organisms are adapted well the the environment because they live well off of the conditions is presents. An example of this would be saber. Saber has webbed feet to help him through all the water that is surrounding his environment. This helps him easily catch his prey(sam) who lives in the water. He is able to move swiftly and quickly which means the mountains will not stand in his way of getting to bazoo.

Co-evolution

In class we performed an activity involving different types of beans, split peas and birds (which were us, the students in the class). In the beginning of the activity we were separated into three different groups based on whether we received a knife, spoon or a fork. The knife, spoon and fork represented the beak of the bird that we were. a certain amount of each type of bean and pea was counted out and placed into a cup and all birds gathered in the front of the room. When the cup of food was dumped on the floor all of the birds using only their beaks had to pick up as much food as they could and place it in their hand which represented their stomach. When the time was up each group (either spoon, knife, or fork) was to add up the amount of each type of food that they got as a group. According to the results the amount of each type of bean and pea would either increase or decrease and this would also affect the amount of each type of beaked bird and how many of their kind survived. The type of bird that got the most food was able to reproduce and there would be an increasing number of them and the other types decreased in number. Natural selection is the process whereby an organism is better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. As stated above this activity demonstrates natural selection because the more food one group of birds was able to collect the more offspring they were able to collect and the less the group was able to collect the more of them died off. In the activity as the group of spoons grew large the forks were slowly decreasing but safe although they were largely outnumbered by the spoons and the knives got down to just one member. Co-evelution is the evolution of two species in which the evolution  of one affects the evolution of another. This activity demonstrates co-evolution because as one group obtains more food and grows in number another group will struggle to gain more food causing them to decrease in population. I was in the group of forks. My group worked together to maximize our ability to eat beans by using one beak to scoop it into the others beak for faster eating.
I think that this activity was really beneficial and helpful to have a better understanding of the concepts of co-evolution and natural selection. This is something that I feel could be done with many different age groups of children but also appropriate to do in the college setting.
Coevolution Activity F 2015.xlsx

Pond Water

While looking at just a single drop of pond water through the microscope I was amazed at how much I could see. Just from a normal eyes view you would never think that there were so many organisms and different forms of life growing and living within such a confined space as well as so many other non living items. I was amazed at the amount of things that had always been present out of all the time I have seen pond water and was just oblivious to all that it involved. During my time viewing the droplet of pond water I was able to identify many living things through the microscope while I was also discovering so many things that I wasn't able to identify. Some of the things that I was able to identify were green algae with no flagella which appeared to be spherical and not attached to the surface with no movement. Some of the other things that I was able to identify within my tiny droplet of pond water was a roundworm. This worm was moved is an "s" formation and in a sort of rapid speed, an ostracod, as well as an odd "thing" we were both unable to identify! This has a long skinny leg with cilia coming from both sides of it. The body was round and way more wide than the only one visible leg.(I would love to learn more about this unique creature I was looking at).
The one thing that I viewed that I found especially interesting was the round worm. A roundworms diet includes small animals both dead and alive or on algae, fungi and bacteria. They tend to live in almost every habitat including seas and freshwater, and land. They typically end to live in-between sediments of the surface of water of swim along the bottom. One interesting fact that I found about these mysterious creatures is that all freshwater roundworms secrete sticky mucous from the tip of their hind end which anchors the worm in place whether it be on a rock or indie an intestine. Spooky!

Genetic Disease: Autism

Autism is also sometimes known as autism spectrum disorder. Both of these terms describe a group of complex disorders of brain development. These complex disorders of brain development come in different levels of severity including social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors.
Some of the symptoms of this disease include difficulties in motor coordination and attention. Also, lower physical health. Although many of the symptoms appear to be negative, an individual with autism spectrum disorder may also appear to excel in visual skills, music, math and art. An individual with autism will typically show symptoms between the ages of 2 and 3 years of age so that tells us that autism appears to have roots in early brain development. When a child is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, the symptoms will improve with age and treatment to where they can live a normal or near normal life.
As stated above autism is on a large spectrum meaning that there is no one type of autism also meaning that there is no one cause of autism. Throughout the past few years they were able to discover rare changes in genes that are associated with autism and some of them are sufficient enough to be the cause of autism alone. Although, scientists have now come to believe that autism is a combination of risk genes as well as environmental factors that have an influence on early brain development. To try and understand more about this confusing genetic relation, scientist started comparing the DNA of autistic children to their parents DNA. According to many studies autism appears to be genetically heterogeneous which means that multiple loci are involved. Several genome studies have shown that at least two  loci on the X chromosome are associated with a predisposition to autism.
Autism spectrum disorder affects one out of every 68 children in the USA and it occurs more often in boys than girls. It is not for sure discovered what gene is affected although some doctors have come to believe that there is a certain cluster of unstable genes that interfere with brain development resulting in autism. It is believed that sometimes the symptoms of a genetic disease are caused by a specific protein being made or not being made within the body. In regards to autism spectrum disorder some scientists have shown how a single protein may trigger autism spectrum disorder by stopping effective communication between brain cells.