Fetal Pig Dissection

An eye, a lens

 Kidney: Renal Medulla, Renal Pelvis, Cortex

 Eye, lens, tongue

 Brain

 Stomach, small intestine, large intestine

 Heart: left & right atrium, left & right ventricles, apex, aorta

The Cove

Where is the dolphin slaughter taking place?
Taiji, Japan.

What country indirectly runs the International Whaling Commission?
Japan.

How many dolphins are killed at this secret cove a year?
23,000.

What toxic substance is found in dolphin meat?
Mercury.

When was whaling banned?
1986.

If you go to Marineland are you contributing to the dolphin slaughter? Explain why or why not.
Yes, if I go to Marineland I am contributing to the dolphin slaughter because the whole purpose of capturing the dolphins in the first place is to sell the best of the best to the trainers from such as Marineland. When people pay to see dolphin shows, whether they know it or not, they are supporting the captivity of these creatures. And as long as the demands are present to the fishermen in Taiji, they will corner thousands of dolphins to their hiding place and either slaughter the living, breathing organisms and blindly sell their highly toxic meat to people or the "lucky" chosen ones get to live but get their freedom taken away. So yes, the necessity to entertain ourselves contributes to mass slaughter of dolphins.

ROM: Attack of the Jellys!!!!

So long time ago, my bio class got to go on a field trip to the Royal Ontario Museum! I was very excited because that was the only field trip I will have this semester. However, my excitement has been crushed soon after we arrived at ROM. And that is because a very nice gentleman, who is an excellent storyteller, guided us through everything that is wrong with our ecosystem. There were many species that were bound to be extinct, were going to be extinct but sustained their population or have already been extinct all thanks to human activities. Among many tragic stories, I have decided to talk about Jellyfish! *Jellyfish are not actually fish so technically they are just Jellys* 

There are many speculations to what had happened to the jellys but one thing is for certain, jellys are taking over the ocean! Some theories to this phenomena are over-fishing, and rising oceanic temperature from global warming. The fish and jelly populations are very intertwined with each other. The fish and jelly prey on the same kinds so when fish are out of the picture, jelly had more food to themselves. Also, as the population of jellys increase, more fish eggs are eaten by the jelly. Also, the rising temperature produce the perfect breeding ground for the jelly. It is a huge problem for food supply for humans because on one hand, the useful resources are decreasing and on the other, mesh of problems to clean up are increasing. 

Some scientists say that the fear of these Jellyfish are overblown. The jellyfish blooms have happened before and it is part of the cyclical increase. Eventually, the population of jellys will oversize the available food supply and lead to a crash. 

Whatever the case may be, the over-fishing and rising temperature are definitely not helping the marine ecosystem.

Shark Fin Ban

Couple of months ago, Toronto council voted to ban shark fin because of the animal cruelty that came along with shark fin fishing. However, soon after the ban, human rights complaints have been filed against the new law. The main reason for this complaint is because of the traditional shark fin soup the Chinese-Canadian community love and enjoy. Many people feel that by banning shark fin, they are also banning the their culture.

Most of the times, traditions are awesome. It gives groups of people an identity, it defines them and gives the uniqueness to differ from others. However, traditions sometimes result in ignorance when people go to the extreme to maintain the traditions. This is not just with the shark fins but many other issues. People get so caught up in trying to keep up their practices that they are willing to hurt others if that's what it takes.

Perhaps the best way to solve this situation is not to criticize the conservative people but to target the new generation. Once the lifestyle has been set, it is set in stone for many of the people and it is almost impossible to change that habit. So make the fresh and open-minded minds aware of these issues. But it better be done soon because the time is ticking.

Clothes-pin vs. Muscle fatigue lab

Clothes-pin VS Muscle fatigue Lab

1. Strength decreased as you progressed through the trial

2. Hands and fingers felt numb, tired, and strained

3. Focus and breathing might have caused us to get more squeezes

4. The dominant hand showed slightly higher results than the non-dominant hand

5. The muscles would've been able to operate at the original squeeze rate because they were relaxed and given time to regain energy

Bio Note

• energy: ability to do work
• metabolism: the sum of all anabolic and catabolic processes in a cell or organism
• kinetic energy: energy possessed by moving objects
• potential energy: energy stored by virtue of an object's position within an attractive or repulsive force field
• work: the transfer of energy form one body or place to another
• the first law of thermodynamics: the total amount of energy in the universe is constant. Energy cannot be created or destroyed bout only converted from one from into another. If an object or process gains an amount of energy, it does so at the expense of a loss in energy somewhere else in the universe
• bond energy: the minimum energy required to break one mole of bonds between two species of atoms; a measure of the stability of  a chemical bond
• activation energy: the difference between the potential energy level of the transition state and the potential energy of reacting molecules
• transition state: in a chemical reaction, a temporary condition in which the bonds within reactants are breaking and the bonds between products are forming
• entropy(S): a measure of the randomness or disorder in a collection of objects or energy
• free energy: energy that can do useful work
• second law of thermodynamics: the entropy of the universe increases with any change that occurs.
• exergonic reaction: a chemical reaction in which the energy of the products is less than the energy of reactants
• endergonic reaction:  a chemical reaction in which the energy of the products is more than the energy of the reactants
• oxidation: a chemical reaction in which an atom loses one more electrons
• reduction: gain electron
• redox reation: oxidation and reduction
• reducing agent: the substance that loses an electron/ substance that causes the reduced atom to become reduced
• oxidizing agent: the substance that gains an electron/ substance that causes the oxidized atom to become oxidized
• substrate:  the reactant that an enzyme acts on when it catalyzes a chemical reaction
• active site: the location where the substrate binds to an enzyme

Grade 12 Biotech in a Nutshell

10. Restriction Endonucleases/ restriction enzymes

• act as scissors and cut specific base-pair sequence known as recognition site
• these enzymes are used to cut double stranded DNA in a predictable and precise manner
• most recognition sites are characterized by a complementary palindromic sequence.
• palindromic = bot strands have same base sequence when read in 5' to 3'
• enzymes bind, disrupts (hydrolysis reaction) the phosphodiester bond btwn two base pairs
• then hydrogen bonds in between the cuts are broken

9. Sticky/ Blunt Ends

• sticky ends= ends of DNA fragment with short s.s. overhangs, resulting from cleavage by restriction enzymes
• blunt ends= fully base paired ends of DNA fragment resulting from cleavage by restriction enzymes
• sticky ends more useful b/c it can be joined more easily to other sticky end that has been produced by the same restriction endonuclease through complementary base pairing

8. Methylases

• enzymes that add methyl group to one of the nucleotides found in a restriction endonuclease recognition site
• prevent the bacteria's immune system to cleave its own DNA

7. DNA Ligase

• glues two fragments of DNA, generated using the same restriction enzyme, together
• two fragments are naturally attracted to each other b/c of their complementary base pairs
• hydrogen bonds will form btwn the nucleotides but it is not a stable arrangement
• phosphodiester linkage must be reformed 
• DNA ligase uses condensation reaction and drives out a molecule of water to form phosphodiester bond

6. Gel Electrophoresis

• separation of charged molecules by size in a gel
• DNA -> negatively charged, relatively similar mass nucleotides
• the fragments are put in a gel where one side is +'vely charged and other -'vely
• DNA fragments are attracted to +'ve side and moves towards it
• long fragments don't go that far and small fragments move closer to +'ve side b/c they are small and can navigate through pores
• agarose = polysaccharide found in seaweed used to form gell meshwork

5. Vector Cloning/Transformation

• the fragments of DNA with sticky ends are put into a plasmid of a bacteria
• plasmids are engineered to have multiple-cloning site, a region in plasmid that contain recognition sites of a number of restriction endonucleases
• introduction of foreign DNA, usually by plasmid or virus, into a bacterial cell
• plasmids are vectors
• bacterium that readily take up foreighn DNA is called competent cell
• selective plating isolates the cells with recombinant DNA
• cloned vectors have antibiotic-resistance gene thus if transformation is successful the bacteria will be able to grow on media that contain the antibiotic

4. PCR: Polymerase Chain Reaction

• similar to DNA replication in nucleus but instead of helicase and gyrase, heat is used to separate the strands
• at 94C - 96C the hydrogen bonds are broken
• DNA primers are synthesized in lab and is used to start the elongation
• DNA primers has to be complementary to the target area to be copied
• the temperature is brought down to 50C - 65C to let the primers anneal
• Taq polymerase starts building the complementary starnds at 72C

3. RFLP: Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism

• polymorphism= difference in DNA sequence,, coding or non-coding, that can be detected btwn individuals
• polymorphism in coding region can be identified with specific mutations. ex. sickle  cell
• RFLP= method used to compare differences in DNA fragments btwn individuals using restriction endonucleases

2. DNA Sequencing

• Sanger dideoxy method is most popular
• similar to DNA replication
• need 4 identical single-stranded DNA with radioactively labelled primer in 4 different test tubes
• DNA polymerase and a supply of free nucleotides in form of all four deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dATP, dTTP, dGTP, and dCTP) are added
• each test tube contains dideoxy analogue of one of the deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs)
• dideoxy analogue stops elongation b/c it does not have -OH group on the 3' carbon to create a phosphodiester bond
• thus, different lengths of complementary DNA is built
• the fragments can be read in a gel

1. Application

• restriction enzymes are expensive thus cannot use many in real life
• complete digestion is also unrealistic