Blog #13:

This week, we've discussed the topic of viruses. Many have debated whether or not viruses are alive, but I think that viruses are alive because viruses are consider prokaryotic cells and they are constantly growing and dividing themselves very quick. They also adapt to the surrouding environment (inside our body) very quickly. There are four types of virus cycles, and they are lytic, lysogenic, retrovirus and envelop virus. In lytic cycle is the process that the virus move around and find the bacteria that are beneficial to our body and it injects its DNA into the the host. The DNA inside the host began to break down and eventually break into viruses, after it becomes too much for the cell to store, the cell eventually burst and release the viruses. Examples of lytic cycle is E-Coli. During the lysogenic cycle, the virus DNA become part of the bacteria DNA and it becomes a pro-virus and is inactive for period of times. The cell eventually divide into daugther cells, and the virus become the lytic cycle. Example of lysogenic cycle is Herpes. Retrovirus is a type of virus that is constantly changing, and it usually makes random mistakes. It enters the nucleus and become part of the DNA and through DNA replication, the virus cell become RNA and enter the ribosome and create the harmful protein and the virus spread and divide exponentially. Example of retrovirus is the HIV virus that cause the deadly disease, AID. During the envelop virus, instead of entering the nucleus and become part of the DNA, it went through the ribosome, and example of that is Hepatitis C.

Blog #12:

The weeks that came before the winter break, we learned about meiosis and mitosis. We also talked about enzymes and the reactions they produce. There are two types of enzymes that take place with an enzyme are dehydration reaction and hydrolysis. Dehydration is when a new monomer is being a chain in a polymer, while hydrolysis is when a monomer is being released from a polymer chain and an amount of water is being consumed.
The human body contains 46 chromosomes total. Through the process of meiosis, the cell only contains 23 chromosomes. When it undergoes meiosis the two cells come together to form a complete set of chromosomes. Mitosis is the process that is associated with the sexual reproduction of cells, when the cells divide and the two daughter cells are identical. Cells that go through this process, are identical because an unfertilized egg develops into an embryo using its two sets of maternal chromosomes.

Blog 6: Marking Period 2

This is the 6th blog that I have written and I think that I will talk about some of the things that I have learned this week. This weeks topic is ENZYMES! I think that this is one of the only topics that I feel very strongly about. I really like the way of teaching that Mr.Gardener has been doing. I hope that we will be continuing this method as the year goes on. Anyway, Enzymes end in the letters ASE, and so that means that it is easier to understand what a substances is based on its ending. I know that amino acids are joined together by a peptide bond. Enthalpy is the measure of heat energy, and Entropy is the randomness and disorder. Yeah and I learned a lot of other things this week and I will keep you posted as the weeks continue.

Blog 5: Marking Period 2

In this blog I want to talk a little about cellular respiration and what I have learned about it. Cellular respiration is series of metabolic processes by which living cells produce energy through the oxidation of organic substances. I wanted to make sure that I wrote down some important information regarding cellular respiration so I took notes. I know that ATP is a common carrier of chemical energy in the cell, and the cellular respiration id the splitting of glucose molecules to transfer energy to ATP. It also has two stages Glycolysis and Aerobic respiration.

During glycolysis small amounts of ATP is produced when glucose is broken down to pyruvate. Pyruvate can go through aerobic respiration (Large amount of ATP) or anaerobic respiration. (Small amounts of ATP) I think that I have a basic understanding of what is going on.

Blog 4: Marking Period

Okay, so I have to write a few more blogs so I don't get a bad grade in this class. I think that I will write a little bit about photosynthesis. So we have learned a great deal about what photosynthesis these last few weeks. The actual definition of photosynthesis is the process in green plants and certain other organisms by which carbohydrates are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water using light as an energy source. Most forms of photosynthesis release oxygen as a byproduct. I learned that chlorophyll a not only produces all the oxygen for the respiration on Earth, but also produces oxygen for the formation of ozone, which protects the planet from dangerous ultraviolet light. Also that the pigments found within photosynthesis are chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and carotene.
When we were doing the lab for photosynthesis in class I didn't find it to be that difficult and I believe that I understood the whole process that was going on. I think that the most difficult part of the lab was when I had to find the R value for the solutions. I didn't fully understand what I had to do until Johnson came over and explained it to me. He helped me a lot and I was able to complete the remainder of the calculations on my own.

Blog # 3: For the Second Marking Period

This week was very busy and very short due to the brake that we had on Tuesday. We we came back into school on Wednesday, we had to complete an experiment that would help us understand the topic we were to be learning about in class. My group had to pair up with another group in order to finish the experiment. The experiment had two parts, one way would show us the results of respiration in cold temperatures, and the other experiment would show us the results of respiration in warmer temperatures. My group had to do the experiment dealing with warmer temperatures. What I discovered was that in warmer temperatures the cellular respiration occurs slowly, where as in the cold experiment, it happened much faster. My group and I had to do curtain parts of the experiment over a few times. When we were recorded the data that we obtained, we had to fill in the data a couple of times because we were unsure of what we were doing.

Blog #2: For Second Marking Period

Well this week went by really fast. I was happy that it went back quickly; I really can’t wait until tomorrow. It will be Saturday and I can get some sleep, before getting started on some more work. Well, anyway, today we did an experiment designed to show use the effects of Cellular Respiration. My partners and I started our experiment today. We had these germinated and non-germinated beans, and some beads that we placed into small containers. Then we put a cork on the cover and pored some food coloring into the glass tubing. The question that we tried to answer was, “How does increasing the temperature affect the pressure and the volume of the gas?” My group made some predictions about what would happen in the experiment. We said, “As the temperature increases, the pressure of the gas increases too. The volume will decrease because it allows molecules to vibrate faster, which makes them move at a higher speed.I am looking forward to next week and I hope that I can fix my data charts. See you Monday!!