DNA Transcription

Initiation:

• Transcription Factors locate promoter region (TATA box) 
• TF binds with promoter 
• Pol 2 begins to transcribe by reading TF
• DNA begin to unwind and become more stable
• Transcription takes place on complementary strand

Elongation:

• 5' to 3' direction 
• anti-parallel from template (antisense)
• similar to coding (sense) 
• T (thymine) is replaced by U (uracil) 
• Goes from upstream to down stream

Termination:

• Stops when it reaches AAAAUAAA

DNA replication Story

Act 1: Initiation 
There once was a DNA that felt lonely, so he wanted to replicate itself, so he called the replication company for help.  The replication company sent out helicase, who's job is to help unwind the DNA, which is a really simple task, because of the weak hydrogen bonds, this results in two strands (the initiation point where the splitting starts is known as the replication fork).  Helicase's assistant, single-strand-binding protein has a very important job, they are to help stabilize the newly unwound single strands.  The process was too painful for the DNA, but fortunately helicase had brought in his other co-worker Gyrase to ease his pain.
Act 2: Elongation 
Now DNA is split into two strands, each running anti-parallel to each other.  One strand is oriented in the 5' to 3' direction, while the other strand is oriented in the 3' to 5' strand. DNA polymerase attaches new nucleotides to the 3' end of the 5' to 3' strand (leading strand). Okazaki Fragments generate during the synthesis of the lagging strand of the 3' to 5' strand.
Act 3: Termination
Later, the Okazaki Fragments are joined together by DNA ligase, and POL 1 comes along to do a quality check of what happened (proofreading).

Relationships between Catabolism, Anabolism and Metabolism

Time to bring everything together :)
Anabolism: The phase of metabolism in which simple substances are synthesized into the complex materials of living tissue.

 Cyclic Cycle

Non-Cyclic Cycle










Calvin Cycle

Catabolism: The metabolic breakdown of complex molecules into simpler ones, often resulting in a release of energy. 


Glycolysis 


















Kreb Cycle


















Electron Transport Chain

Metablisim: the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life.

Anabolism + Catabolism = Metabolism

Bio Trip to Downtown

Yesterday was our biology trip to U of T and to the ROM.  It wasn't easy getting to school by 8:00 AM, but at least most of us were able to get some more sleep on the bus.  The lectures that were presented were very interesting to hear, and motivated some of us in one way or another into choosing what we want to go into or do with our lives.  But I felt that the auditorium wasn't placed in the best location, because we were able to hear the subway pass by below us.  After the lecture we were let to roam downtown to find lunch and then head back to the ROM by 1, which meant that we had more than an hour to find food, and when I say food I meant McDonald's.
I've been to the ROM so many times as a kid, but I never really had a person take us around the ROM, it was mostly a "go as you please" type of thing where we basically just walked around the ROM aimlessly, although there was this one time I went to the ROM with my Latin class and was able to touch some of the artifacts and had a mini lesson from a teacher that worked there.
The lady that was giving us our lesson was really nice, and she knew everything there was to know about the animals in the display.  She seems like a person who was really passionate about her work, and looked like she really enjoyed doing what she did.  She gave us a variety of lessons; she gave us a lesson about the mistletoe bird, and how the seed of the mistletoe causes the bird to poop 25 minutes after eating it and causes their poop to be stuck on their tails causing the bird to rub it against a tree, the flower that looked like a pokemon which creates a stench that smells like rotting meat and is the colour of dead meat that will attract bugs like flies, the story about lemmings and how their population is inconsistent and that one year there can be a huge population of them and then the next they would be on the brink of extinction, and a story about the corals and how they are so sensitive to change that the plant species that live on them will leave and cause the coral to be "bleached".

Since we only need to write about one story that she had told us I will be talking about the story about the passenger pigeons.

Passenger pigeons were pigeons that enjoyed staying in big flocks, and when I say big I mean real big, as in they have the ability to cover the sun and rain bird poop, making it seem like the world's ending I guess.  One of the reasons that they fly in such big numbers is because it is safe to be in great numbers since they don't have any protective mechanisms that will help them since they're just pigeons.

Since Passenger birds was abundant back then, having a population of over 3.5 billion, humans decided to kill them for food, since I guess they thought pigeon meat taste good, and also to make sure they don't eat all their crops, although according to our teacher the pigeon's poop will become very beneficial for next year's crop.  You can shoot up at the sky with a gun and you are 100% guaranteed to be able to get at least one pigeon.  Another method that the humans did was pluck out the eyes of a passenger pigeon and then tie it on a tree to make to fly in distress.  Many birds that see this will want to fly towards the poor bird and try to save it since they are social birds, but end up being clubbed to death.  There was a record that over 4000 pigeons were killed a day for a few months which ended up killing a lot of the population.  Since these pigeons are social birds they start to die off when their population starts decreasing.  Because of the decrease of population, the birds did not breed often, resulting in another factor that had caused their population to decrease even more.  The last passenger pigeon was a female at the Cincinnati Zoo (1914).  It really saddens me that humans are the cause of the extinction of animals.  Without this tour, I wouldn't have learned about passenger pigeons.     

Taking a deeper look into Photosynthesis (10 points)

1. Two hydrogen bond with one oxygen to form water 
2. LEO: Lose Electron Oxidation
3. GER: Gain Electron Reduction
4. PS2 and PS1 must have light to stimulate it so that it can gain electrons
5. Photalysis is when an electron from a water molecule is being taken away
6. PQ takes the electrons away from PS2 and becomes PQH2
7. b6f then takes the electrons which then forms a bridge with PQH2 to allow hydrogen atoms to enter
8. PC then take's b6f's electrons but then is later on taken away by PS1 when it is stimulated by sunlight
9. FD then takes away the electrons then FNR.  NADP breaks up the sister bonds, splitting them into two, only taking one and leaving the other
10. STP synthase is when the spinning is slowed down for the hydrogen to be released 

Pig Dissection Blog

Last week I did the second dissection ever, and hopefully my last.  This Dissection was to be helpful in enriching us about the systems (nervous, endocrine and urinary).  I personally did not enjoy doing the dissection (strange how I am able to watch Hannibal, but not be able to handle a dissection), but being able to see it in three dimensional form and not just on a flat piece of paper, made me have a better understanding of how each system worked.

Day 1: Dissection of lower body

Here we are trying to see if our fetal pig is a boy or girl, but we were not able to; we would need to see if there are ovaries in the fetal pig or not

Let the dissection begin:

We then start taking out it's organs

Small intestine

Kidneys

 Spleen

 We accidentally burst the stomach

Bottom half complete 

Day 2: Dissection of upper body

Cutting through thoracic cavity

Time to take out everything from the top half

Here we have the heart

Lungs

Here we are trying to take out the brain as carefully as possible.

well that didn't go as well as expected

Time to go dissect the eye

Here's the lens the other group's fetal pig

All in all the dissection was alright.  I actually had enough guts to cut open the skull which was a pretty okay experience that I do not ever want to do again.

 

The Story of Stuff: A Critical Analysis (Even Numbers)

2.  I believe that the audience that Annie Leonard is trying to reach is the consumers of USA, and the world.

4.  I think that Annie uses the format of a 20 minute video rather than another format like a report, web blog, or poster is because formats such as a report and poster does not get the attention of an audience.  She makes her video into this format (with pictures, and her standing there stating the facts) so that it can be easily understood (children are able to understand it and possibly people who's first language is not English).

6.  I think that the business people would disagree with what Annie has to say, because what she is saying is causing them to lose business, since most of their costumers would be informed about what is happening, and the business tactics that they are using.  What she is saying may cause the business people to raise the price of their products, because they would have to make their products in a safe environment where their employees are paid fairly and will be working in safe conditions where it would not affect their health.  Also they would have to find a solution that would reduce the amount of garbage that is being produced, and to make their product more efficient where it's main purpose is not to be broken after a few months of usage or to be replaced frequently.

8.  I don't really think this video has affected the way I think about consumption, because I already know about everything that the video is talking about.   There is no way that the cheap products that we are buying off the shelves of Walmart and other stores is coming from a place that pays their employees fairly.  I already know that the products that we are buying are producing a lot of garbage from first hand experience, so I tend to buy things of higher quality, and try to buy products that aren't made in China, or any other Asian countries that don't make a safe environment for their employees.  I'm one of those people that don't go with the trend, so when I buy electronics I would buy something that would last me a long time.