Module #10: Ecology

Ecology first of all means: the study of the interactions between living and nonliving things. Ecology are several sub groups. Here they are starting at the narrowest classification down to broadest below.

Populations- a group of interbreeding organisms coexisting together (species)

Community- A group of populations living and interacting in the same area (several species, or populations)

Ecosystem - An association of living organisms and their physical environment (several populations and their surroundings)

Biome - A group of ecosystem classified by climate and plant life (several entire ecosystems)

Now that you know that I’m going to talk about a Ecosystem, containing animals and plants. As you already know their are producers, consumers, herbivores and carnivores. What you may not know is that within consumers are Primary Consumers, Secondary Consumers and Tertiary Consumers. Primary consumers are an organisms that eat producers,such as plants, this also makes them a herbivore. Secondary consumers are an organism that eat primary consumers, other animals, making them a carnivore. Lastly Tertiary Consumers that are organisms that eat secondary consumers, also eating others animals and is also a carnivore. These relationships are known as trophic levels. With this concept is born a food chain, plants at the bottom, primary consumers one level up, secondary consumers above that, and finally Tertiary consumers. For example:

Plant gets eaten by a mouse, mouse gets eaten by a snake, snake gets eaten by a hawk, equals This all creates an Ecosystem.

One last thing on this topic, we learned here that energy is lost each time it moves up a trophic level in an ecosystem. Thus, we get the...

Ecological Pyramid - a diagram that shows the biomass of organisms at each trophic level

what’s Biomass?

Biomass - a measure of total dry mass of organisms within a particular region.

These are all fancy long confusing words to state simply that it takes a lot of plants to satisfy a primary consumer, a lot more of primary consumers to fill up a secondary consumer and a lot, lot more secondary consumers to make a Tertiary consumer not hungry anymore.

Above are mostly preditor/prey relationships but Ecology is not just about enemies. It can be those animals and their surroundings that work together, and help each other. does such a thing exist? Yes, and it’s called Mutualism.

Examples of Mutualism:

Clown fish and Sea Anemones. The fish is protected from enemy fish by hiding in the Anemones tentacles. Other fish are sometimes unable to resist and go after the clown fish anyway, but get stung by the Anemones fatal blows. The fish is protected. The Anemones gets food.

The Blind Shrimp and the Goby. The blind shrimp, as described, is blind and can’t see enemy fish as it digs out his home of ocean debris. The Goby doesn’t have a home, but, it can see. So, they somehow agreed to work together. The Goby watches outside the home while the shrimp digs. When the Goby sees danger it alert the shrimp by flicking it’s fin were one of the shrimps feelers is resting. When this happens both dash into the home and wait until the Goby says the reef is clear. The fish gets a place to sleep. The shrimp doesn’t get eaten.

The last thing we talked about in this module is the Physical Environment. Water Cycles, Oxygen Cycles, and Carbon Cycles. But if you want to know more about that you’ll have to take a look in the book.

Module # 8: Mendelian genetics

Gregor Mendel was born in Austria in the year 1822, as a peasant. His father was a farmer and taught Gregor about animal breeding and plant grafting, which interested Gregor very much. His learning at school impressed his teacher, and she urged his parents to let him get a higher education, which at that time was equal to high school. His parents agreed but they were so poor that they couldn’t help pay for it. He struggled through his school, almost starving because he couldn’t afford to eat.

When he was done with his school he tried to be a teacher, but failed twice. But a man named Andreas Baumgartner pulled some strings for him and he was admitted to the University of Vienna. While he was there he studied under a man named Johann Christian Doppler. Doppler taught him the way to conduct experiments.

For eight years Mendel conducted experiments on breeding. He raised thousands of pea plants and documented the results of breeding and crossbreeding them. At the end of those eight years he published a paper that held a series of four conclusions which are the basis of what we call the Mendelian genetics.

Sadly, Gregory’s work went unnoticed and Gregor had to give up his scientific endeavors because he became involved in a political controversy. He spent the rest of his life fighting against taxation. When he died in 1884, no one knew the significance of his experiments. But by the 1930’s his work was well known throughout the scientific community.

During his eight years of scientific work, Mendel studied pea plants. He observed that some pea plants were tall, some were short, some had flowers that grew along the sides of the plant (axial flowered plants), some plants had flowers that grew on the top of the plant (terminal flowered plants), some had green pea pods, some plants had yellow pods, some yellow peas, some green peas, some smooth peas, and some wrinkled peas.

Mendel noticed that some plants bred so as to produce offspring with the same characteristic. For example, some tall plants would always give rise to other tall plants. If this happens we say the plant had bred true.

True breeding – if an organism has a certain characteristic that is always passed on to its offspring we say that this organism bred true with respect to that characteristic

Mendel noticed that not all plants bred true. With this in mind, Mendel devised a set of experiments. He took a tall plant that always bred true and allowed it to sexually reproduce with a short pea plant that always bred true. No matter how many times he did this the offspring were always tall. Mendel observed that with other definable characteristics the outcome was similar.

When axial flowered plants were bred with terminal flowered plants the offspring were always axial flowered plants. When green pod plants were bred with yellow pod plants the offspring always possessed green pods. Yellow pea plants bred with green pea plants resulted in yellow pea plants. Likewise, smooth pea plants mixed with wrinkled pea plants produced smooth pea plants.

As pea plants can self breed, Mendel tried experiments in self pollinating pea plants. He noticed that when this happened 75% would be the dominant characteristic, but the other 25% would be the opposite characteristic. For example, a tall pea plant bred with itself would result in 75% of the offspring being tall, but the other 25% would be short.

These two sets of experiments led Mendel to develop four principles of genetics:

1. The traits of an organism are determined by packets of information called “factors”.
2. Each organism has not one but two factors that determine its traits.
3. In sexual reproduction each parent contributes only one of its factors to the offspring.
4. In each definable trait, there is a dominant factor. If it exists in an organism, the trait determined by that dominant factor will be expressed.

How do these principles help explain the data that Mendel collected? Well, Mendel assumed that if a plant always breeds true, it must have two factors that are identical. In other words, if a tall pea plant always produces tall offspring it must have two factors that correspond to the trait of being tall. A short plant that always produces short plants must have two factors that correspond to the trait of being short. Since each parent had two of the same factor, they always contribute that factor to the offspring. Thus, the offspring produced when a true breeding tall plant was bred with a true breeding short plant would always have one factor that corresponded to being tall and on factor that corresponded to being short. By further assuming that the factor corresponding to being tall was dominant, each offspring would be tall, because each offspring had that dominant factor.

---Animalia

Module #7 - Cellular Reproduction and DNA

Genetics - the science that studies how characteristics get passed form parent to offspring
Gene - A section of DNA that codes for the production of a protein or a portion of protein, thereby causing a trait
most of your characteristics come from a store house called DNA, DNA is mostly for making proteins. But the proteins it makes, is what makes you have blue eyes or green eyes, brown or blond hair, and other things! of course not all traits are made from DNA protein. if you never pick up a weight in your life, you’re not going to be very strong no matter what your ability is. the ability, or range of how strong you can be come from you DNA proteins, but it’s up you to make your strength at the bottom of that picked scale or at the top. a gene also helps with traits, like proteins. but genes are the coding for a particular genetic trait or tendency.
there are three factors that make up who you are
Genetic Factors - proteins & genes
Environmental Factors - surroundings & situations
Spiritual Factors - relationship with god & understanding of the gospel
all of which help make you, you. however at the scientific point of view Genetic, is the most important factor, we can decide for ourselves.

Protein Syntheses - how you get the protiens
First comes Transcription - In transcription part of the DNA of a cell unwinds itself and opens up for a RNA ( a strand like DNA but without the deoxyribose it made with, instead is has ribose. Also it has it has a different 4th nucleotide base. DNA has adenine, cytosine guanine and thymine while RNA has Uracil instead of Thymine.) The strand opens up and lets the RNA in to make an opposite copy of the DNA, the RNA take the copy to the ribosomes to make protein.
Then comes Translation - In the ribosome,tRNA strands(trancefer RNA) attract with mRNA strands( messenger RNA) that have a codon (a section of mRNA that refers to a specific amino acid) that an anticodon ( a section of tRNA) and they bonds to. The tRNA strands bond with mRNA, pulling amino acids behind them. Then the amino acids have to bond and then after that happens many many times, you finally get a protein!

There was more in this module, but this is all i’m going to write. If you want to know more go read it yourself.

by: Tameanea

Module #6
The Cell

In this module we studied,
· Cellular Functions
· Cell Structure
· The Cell Wall
· The Plasma Membrane
· The Cytoplasm
· The Mitochondrion
· The Lysosome
· Ribosomes
· The Endoplasmic Reticulum
· The Plastids
· Vacuoles and Vesicles
· Golgi Bodies
· Centioles
· The Nucleus
· The Cytoskeleton
· As If This Isn’t Already Complicated Enough!
· How Substances Travel In and Out of Cells
· How Cells Get Their Energy
· ATP and ADP

As you can tell, we’ve been busy!!! I found this module completely fascinating! At some points (as you can see) seemed to be a little drawn out. But as you learned of more and more that was hidden in our cells you realized that we were barely touching the surface of something we know very little about it. It testified of a Divine Creator, and that we and every magnificent being around us, was not brought about by chance.

As we got talking, our teacher (Brother Butikofer. AKA: Bio Domin) realized I might need some help on this one. So Vanessa and Eliza were willing to help, here’s what they had to say on a few different topics-

Anaerobic verses aerobic cellular respiration and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or Adenosine diphosphate (ADP) release!
if you want to know what this means or don’t want to feel like a failure for the rest of your life because you were scared too read on, please do yourself a favor and simply read through the paragraphs below it’s not that hard and it will help you to avoid any therapy if you don’t!
By: Tamea

There is such a thing as aerobic cellular respiration, for those that don’t know. It is how the cell makes energy. Stage 1 of aerobic cellular respiration is the stage that represents the anaerobic perceptive (anaerobic meaning with out oxygen.) in this stage, called glycolyses, yields pyruvic acid, 4 hydrogen molecules and 2 ATP’s (energy). Actually this process made 4 AT’s but since 2 were spent to drive the reaction, only half of the ATP’s can be used as energy for the body and cell. If the cell has time it will continue to stages 2,3, and 4 but if you need energy fast, you body will only proceed to stage 1 resulting in small burst of energy.
Stage 2,2,and 4 of aerobic cellular respiration is the aerobic phase. (This time it is using oxygen) to make things short, lot of pyruvic acid mixed with 2 acetyl coenzyme A some hydrogen, some oxygen, and some other things put together in different steps and at different time, will make an astonishing number of 32 ATP’s! The over all reaction of these stage is this.
C6H12O6 +6O2 = 6CO2 +6HO2 + 32 ATP’s (energy)

This will give your body more energy but you’ll have to wait longer for it. What’s more is that you will have to complete stage one, 18 times before you would get the same amount of energy you would get form completing all the stages.

2 ATP’s times 18 = 36 ATP’s
It’s just that to get 36 ATP’s you have to wait longer. if you need energy now it’s better to got or the 2 ATP’s 18 times.

why do ATP’s matter?
An ATP is made up of adenosine linked to 3 phosphate groups. an ADp is made up of adenosine with 2 phosphate groups. ADP’s are made when one of an ATP phosphate groups are taken away, this makes a gentle release of energy crucial for the cells survival. Sudden energy release would destroy the cell completely. Eventually after the phosphate group has broken off an ATP (to make an ADP) it will find itself again either in the cytoplasm of a cell, or the mitochondrion and reassemble to makes another ATP to store more energy.
ATP ADP + P + energy

Wow! That was quit the mouth full! Thanks Nessa!!!
And just to help you seen again what we got a little more indepth in, we studied the main parts of the cell, which are: (and forgive me for them not being in any special order)
· Chromatin
· Nucleus
· Nucleolus (and yes there is a different between this one and the last one)
· Pore on the nuclear membrane
· Plasma Membrane
· Lysosome
· Ribosome
· Vesicles
· Golgi Bodies
· Vacuole
· Smooth ER
· Filaments of the cytoskeleton
· Mitochondrion
· Rouch ER

Each one of these, when looked at even closer then just parts of the cell has parts of its own. If you are interested in this subject in more depth, I highly recamend reading Module #6 in the Exploring Creation with Biology by Wile and Durnell.

Module 5

Module # 5: The Chemistry of Life

One thing that we learned in this module was about changes in matter. There are two different categories of change within matter; physical change and chemical change.

Physical change – a change that affects the appearance but not the chemical makeup of a substance.

Chemical change – a change that alters the makeup of the elements or molecules of a substance.

One way to determine whether a change within matter is physical or chemical is to remember: physical changes are generally reversible; chemical changes are not.

An example of physical change would be to boil sugar water. When you put the sugar in the water, the sugar would seem to disappear. But if you boil the water off, the sugar would be left in the bottom of the pan and it would be the same as before. Likewise, if you collected the water vapor and condensed it you would have the same water as before. This is an example of physical change in that it could be reversed.

A good example of chemical change is lighting a piece of paper on fire. Once it has been burned the chemical makeup has been altered and it is impossible to get the paper back to how it was before. Because to is irreversible, it is a chemical change

Osmosis & diffusion

Diffusion – the random motion of molecules from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration

Concentration – a measurement of how much solute exists within a certain volume of solvent

An example of diffusion is if you place some sugar in a napkin and then wrap the napkin into a small package and put a rubber band around it so that the sugar can’t escape, and then place the package with the sugar in a bowl of water. If you left it there in the water for a while and then tasted the water later you would taste sugar in the water. Why? It is because once the sugar was dissolved into the water it moved around randomly and it could go through the napkin. It was just by random chance that there was sugar in the water; it was not moved there by any mysterious force.

Osmosis – the tendency of water to travel across a semipermeable membrane into areas of higher solute concentrate.

Semipermeable membrane – a membrane that allows some molecules to pass through but does not allow other molecules to pass through.

An example of osmosis can be seen in an egg. If you soak an egg in vinegar for a while it will lose its hard shell and you will be left with a semipermeable membrane. Once the hard shell is gone you can see what the egg does in different solutions. If you place the egg in clear sugar syrup and leave it, the egg will get smaller. If you put it in plain water the egg will expand. The reason for this is that in the syrup there is a higher solute concentration outside the egg in the syrup then in the egg. The water moved through the semipermeable membrane to even out the solute concentration. The same thing happened in the water except this time there was more solute inside the egg then outside. The water moved into the egg to even out the solute concentration.

The pH scale

Two classes of molecules we learned about were acids and bases. In general, acids are substances that taste sour, while bases are substances that taste bitter.
In most of the chemical reactions that make life possible, the amount of acid or base present has a profound effect on the speed and effectiveness of the reaction. So it is important to know the level of acid or base. One way to do this is with the pH scale. The pH scale runs from 0 to 14. When a solution has a pH of 7 it is considered neutral, having no acid or base characteristics. The lower the pH, the more acidic it is. Solutions with pH from just above 7 to 14 are called alkaline and have the characteristics of a base.

We also learned about lipids, proteins and enzymes, amino acids and DNA, but sadly I have no time to tell about them. If you would like to know more, buy the book: Exploring Creation with Biology (Second edition). Have a nice day.

Animalia

Fungi - module #4

(the mushroom in the pictures is Jase) hehe

In this module we learned about mushrooms, slime molds, yeast we use for baking, and others kinds of fungi we use to flavor cheese, make medicine and others that cause diseases for people and plants. All of these things come from kingdom Fungi

Most Fungi are multicellular, saprophytic or parasitic decomposing heterotrophs! this all means that most of them are made up of more than one cell and live on a dead organism or alive one, and decomposing it making their own food. when a fungus makes it's own food it digests the food out side of their body. this is called extracellular digestion. this allows other plants to absorb some of the nutrients that have been broken down like trees. when a tree drops it's leaves mushrooms will appear around the bottom and start decomposing the leaves, some of the nutrients will be absorbed by the fungus and some by the tree. so the tree can actually absorb broken down chemicals from it own leaves and be reused! if the fungus didn't do this the tree would be choked out by it's own leaves in just a few seasons! fungi brake down things by using mycelium - which is a mat of strands underneath the stalk (the part we eat) we see on

eat) we see on the top. the mycelium is allot bigger than the stalk and is made up of septate or nonseptiate hypha, which are the individual strands of the mycelium. hypha is a filament of fungal calls. septate hypha have cells walls inside with holes in-between each one and they exchange cytoplasm! they are the only kind of organisms that share cytoplasm! nonseptate hpha have no cell walls inside so it's like one big cell. there is also Rhiziod hypha, a hypha that is imbed in the material on which the fungus grows. Aerial hypha is another kind, it sticks up in the air and either absorbs oxygen, produces spores, or asexually reproduces to form new filament. if it produces spores it is called a sporophore if it reproduces asexually to make filaments it is called a stolon. both of these are a way to make more fungus. the last one is a Haustorium hypha it is a parasitic fungus that enters the host's cells and absorbs nutrition directly from the cytoplasm, this is of course parasitic.

Fungus are classaified into phylums by the what there fruiting bodies (the things above the ground) look like and how they reproduce. here are the phyla:

Basidiomycota - club like spores called basidia

Ascomycota - sac like spores called asci

Zygomcyota - spores were hypha fuse (when 2 hypha run into each other and grow together)

Chytridiomycota - spores with flagella

Deuteromycota - with no known methods of sexual reproduction

Myxomycota - fungi that look like protozoa for much of there lives

Mushrooms, puff balls, shelf fungi, rusts, and smuts come form Basidiomycota. the last 3 being parasitic. yeast is in phylum Ascomycota - yeast we learned is used for baking bread and making alcohol drinks. when the yeast is mixed into the bread dough it starts to feed on the sugars in the bead, this brakes it down into alcohol and carbon dioxide. the carbon dioxide makes the dough rise and the alcohol kills the yeast and then evaporates. the yeast is killed when the alcohol reaches 4 % . other yeast can stand up to 12% but when people want more than a 12% alcohol level in alcoholic drinks they have to do distillation. Distillation is when they boil the water the alcohol is in and since the alcohol boils of at a lower temp then water, they can collect the vapors and then create a solution with higher concentration levels. single celled fungi called chytrids are in Chytridiomycota, mold comes from phylum Zygomycota and penicillin and antibiotics come from Deuteromycota. last of all slime molds and things that look like protozoa for some of there life are placed in Myxomycota.

lastly we learned that lots and lots of mushrooms and poisonous- example: the destroying angle mushroom, it's white and when you eat it, it tastes like a normal tasty mushroom, the drawback is that in 16 hours you'll be dead!!! so only eat mushrooms from the store! :)

we have also developed a hypothesis, (i don't how educated it is but it's a guess)

that Lahonti, might have been poisoned by degrees by mushrooms! :D our only thought supporting our guess though is that there's allot of mushrooms in south america. yea thats it - but hey it's a scientific guess made by sortof scientific student scientists and there awesome Bio Domin!!

- Tameanea

Kingdom PROTISTA

This last week we did module #3! And its all about Kingdom Protista. There are two subkingdoms in Protista. (Note: subkingdom is not a phyla)

• Subkingdom Protozoa
  
• subkingdom Algae

And in side both of these subkingdoms there are 9 major phyla. For subkingdom Protozoa there is 4 major phyla:

• Mastigophora
  
• Sarcodina
  
• Ciliophora
  
• Sporozoa
  

There phyla are distinguished from one another based on their organisms' method of locomotion.
For subkingdom Algae there is 5 major phyla:

• Chlorophyta
• Chrysophyta
• Pyrrophyta
• Phaeophyta
  
• Rhodophyta

Organisms are separated into these phyla based on habitat, organization, and type of cell wall.

In one of our phyla in subkingdom Protozoa: Sarcodina- there is a cell called Amoeba proteus
These cells are so cool! They have a standard body shape, and they are enclosed in a flexibel plasma membrane that lets them change shape whenever they want. When they want to move, they form extentions out of their bodies called pseudopods
Pseudopod- A temporary, foot-like extension of a cell, used for locomotion or engulfing food
This cell is considered eukaryotic because it is so nicely organized inside.

Another cell in subkingdom Protozoa, phyla Mastigophora, is Euglena. These organisms can be found in marine waters, fresh water, and/or moist soil. Members of this genus can produce their own food, by photosynthesis. Though they are photosynthetic we dont consider them to be autotrophic... because in certain curcumstances they can ingest and decompose remains of dead organisms. Even though they can do this, sometimes they obsorb food from their surroundings! As you can see, they have many ways to get food, so we dont have to worry about them surviving! One of the ways it can decide which way he will get his food is with his eyespot
Eyespot- A light-sensitive region in certan protozoa
So they can see if there is light so they can use photosynthesis, or if its dark they can take from their surroundings or they can find dead remains.
Euglena's is a flagellate
Flagellate- A protozoan that propels itself with a flagellum
This cell is very complex, and we just barely touched the surface!

The experiment we did on Friday was EXPERIMENT 3.2
we look at prepared slides for an Amoeba, Paramecium, Euglena and Volvox cells! it was so cool! my favorite was the Volvox, on the slide it was bright pink

It seems like there is just not enough time to soak up everything there is to learn! These modules dont waist a second... there always telling us something totally fasinating! I really love science this year! Thanks to all who help--
Hannah