booger degreasing of wheat germ (DNA extraction)

     When I mixed up wheat germ, water and soap together I thought, "what in the world are we doing". i hadn't a clue why in the world we would be mixing these three things together.  Then after slowly pouring in some alcohol to the mixture, white DNA began to appear in between the layers of the detergent and the alcohol. 

Kinda looks like a layer cake or something

     The DNA from the wheat germ has the fatty phospholipid on the out side of its cells.  Now, what does detergent do, or what is is used for?  Its used to clean off the fatty foods from our dishes and what not.  It does that by breaking apart the fats, the make up of the outter cells of the DNA.  So when we added the soap/detergent, it broke up the fats in the cells and allowed us to view them.  Then after we added the alcohol, it extracted the broken up DNA into the alcohol mixture and allowed us to see them in a clean, boogery looking texture.

Is it stupidity, or just Eugenics?

     In a recent assignment given to me by my teacher, I was most horrified.  It was  a tutorial of Eugenics.  E U Jenics.  Now you may be sitting there wondering what in the world this is and if you guessed "something to do with Genetics", your on the right track.  But you see, Eugenics wasn't just innocent observations of the many diversities of possible genetic combinations that people can make.  Rather than observe, they were forced experiments in a way.  Eugenics was the breeding of people.  Yes I said BREEDING.  There were scientists out there trying breed better humans for the future.  The humans that were up to par for reproduction mated with those of whom the scientists believed would make better humans.  This was all taking place around 1910-1930s or so.
     There was odd reasoning for the scientists to do the things they did.  Basically what they had in mind, was making most everybody in the US able bodied, mentally capable, and racially up the standard (white).  Now you tell me, didn't some crazy guy in germany try to do the same thing during WWII?  What did that physco call it?  Oh yeah, STERILIZATION.  The scientists were trying to be-rid of people they believed weren't up to their standards.  Only they didn't throw people into ovens, or line them up to be shot. They preformed medical operations on those of whom they believed needed to be sterilized.  Men, women, black, mentally disabled.  They would use certain tactics such as "inspecting" the subjects baby and seeing if they thought the baby was good enough to be made again.  The very first person to be sterilized, Cary, went under operation because of the fact that her baby she had didn't quite make it up to par with the scientists.  Some states even took it to the extremity of passing Acts that prevented blacks, male or female, from marrying whites.
      These measly scientists termed there studies with words like positive, and negative eugenics.  Positive Eugenics is when they would mate people that they believed would go on to produce and even better person.  Athletes, harvard grads, white predominancy people would produce positive results in the Eugenics experiments.  But, the mentally challenged, physically challenged, black, Jew, or any other type of social impurity would produce negative results.  Is this Science?  I think prejudice.
      They used certain experiment tactics such as phenotypical traits of chickens and pea pods.  Mixing Black and white and what not to see what all they could discover about the mixing and further processes of breeding.  They would mix the chickens just by what they saw on the outside and just see what happened.  But that is exactly what they were doing wrong.  You see, when they were doing all these experiments, they hadn't yet found out about DNA.  The genotype baby.  So while they were out thinking that they could just take any human of the desired trait they were looking for and make a reproduction, they failed by over looking the possibility of recessive genes.  So if momma was picked and dad was also picked, they weren't necessarily guaranteed the baby they were looking for because of the fact that either mom, or dad could be carrying the recessive trait.   Boo YA!  eat that you radical scientists.
     Eugenics tore a big fat hole in the social boundaries and norms of the US.  Trying to purify, or sterilize based on race really created tension.  Non-whites were extremely angry, and just the tension of having people be pretty much neutered because some dumb scientist didn't think that they were good enough to reproduce.  Thats bull.  Shoot, some states thought this was actually a good idea.  1924, Virginia passed an Act that restricted interracial dating/marrying.  By then, 3000 people had already been sterilized.  Eugenics had an obvious negative impact on american society.  Its one though that i do not believe allot of people know about, and should be publicized a bit more.  Maybe if more people knew about the Eugenics experiments, they would be a little less likely to be prejudice towards others.


These are my notes, nothing special.

o What is eugenics?  The “breeding” of new people based on parents

o What were the social origins of eugenics?  Scientists wanted the majority of the population to be able bodied and mentally stable

o What were the scientific origins of eugenics? Positive Eugenics, and negative Eugenics.

o What research methods were used to study eugenics and what were their flaws? Mendel used chicken color experiments, as well as pea pod breeding to demonstrated his genetic mixing.  But they failed to notice the genotypic traits of each subject.  Mental state, and brain capability was difficult to measure because back then, DNA wasn’t discovered yet.

o How did eugenics research impact American society?  The research Mendel did effected society in racial tensions.  In fact Virginia had an Act they put forth In 1924 that restricted inter racial dating.  By then 3000 people had already been sterilized in attempt to keep purity of race in the states.  People were actually tested by checking their children for signs of impurities for reason to sterilize. 


Source:  http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

Makin Babies baby

      In a  create a baby lab that I participated in with a fellow classmate, we would flip a coin to see if certain traits such as mouth shape, nose size, even the presence of dimples would show up on our "baby" based on the predominincy of our genes.  In order to get the certain Genotype that we were sposed to be carrying to pass on to our baby, we would flip the coin twice to either get a predominint, or dominint homozygous gene, or a heterozygous gene. 
      Now, the best thing about this lab is that it gave me one heck of a better understanding of how genes can be passed onto the child of new parents.  Well, Bikini Bottom Genetics lab helped out with recessive genes as well.  But any way, when you have both parents carrying homozygous genes of a particular trait, it a pretty good chance that your going to have that trait show up on the child, whether it's a dominint, or predominint trait.  But, when you have heterozygous genes being carried by just one of the parents, then things start to become a gamble.  You don't know what the baby will turn out to be like.  For example, if the genes are represented by letters lower and uppercase to show hetero, and homozygous genotypes, then two sets of capitals such as (DD, DD) combined will 100% show up on the baby.  But when you get something like (DD, Dd), the chances reduce because of the fact that heterozygous genes (Dd) are recessive, and can be skipped a generation.
     One of the biggest things that I needed to get some comprehention on was the Pheno, and geno.  But, i learned that recessive genes tend to be a genotypical subject becuase of the fact that recessive genes ane hidden most of the time.  Meaning that you can't see them phenotypically.  When you can see them Phenotypically, then you got dominint genes that were passed on.  If that didn't make sense, let my clarify.  Phenotype is the genes you can see because they show up on the child, and Genotype is the genes that the baby is carrying, but doesn't show.  The phenotype can be either be dominint or recessive because of the game of chance, but all genotypes are recessive based on the fact that they didn't show up on the child.  But don't think the Genotypes can't become phenotypes.  The genotypes lie inside the baby, waiting, lurking, for their chance in later days when the baby grows to be an adult and reproduce.  The recessive genotype could turn into a, dare i say it, phenotype.
     The labs brought me up to a better par on how genetcs work, i just need to get the vocab matched up and what not so i can have some what of an expert understanding.  But, i do know why i look more like grampa than i do my poppa now, so i guess i got SOMETHING outta these labs.

the things I'll wish I woulda known

As I skimmed through the LONG passage/speech thing that this guy wrote, I noticed a few things.  He put allot of time into it, allot of analizing of different point of views, and allot of typing.  I did like it quite a bit though because when you think about it, many teens do end up making the wrong decision right after highschool about what to do cause in todays society, its almost like you HAVE to know what your going to do after words.  He is so reassuring in his words its amazing.  almost comforting.  I myself have been racking my brain trying to think of what i'm going to do after i graduate.  I do know that i DON'T WANT TO SIT IN A CUBICAL ALL DAY!!!!  I think as long as I don't have to do that, I'll be pretty o.k. with what ever i end up doing.  but then i really get to thinking sometimes.  And there is a couple of words that he mentioned in his passage about not letting other peoples opinions get to you and that is one of my biggest things.  The things I happened to accel at and accomplishments i've made all came when i just shut off every one elses' voice, and did what came natural.  Just went with the flow.  like he had said in the passage.  This man knows his stuff.  And i do also believe i'll be showin this to some people.  This material is uplifting, good quality stuff.  i do believe that I can honestly say i'll be refering back to it too. 

Meosis

So we got MITOsis, which is the asexual reproduction of cells in plants.  But then theres MEOsis.  Meosis is the sexual reproduction of organisms' cells.  When meosis takes place, there are a couple more stages that take place which differ from the mitosis process.  For one there is no S phase in meosis.  And there are 2 phases of metaphase, and anaphase.  Before meosis can take place, the chromosomes (all 46 of em) must be assambled.  Then it can begin to divide.  Meosis requires even numbers of chromosomes to begin.  Then they turn into bivalents.  Then the bivalents divide from oposite poles and seperate.  Then telophase as usual, and eventual complete division of the cell. 

PS.  i'm pretty glad i did this post cause if i wouldn't of done at least this much on the subject, i would be completly lost.  It's comin' back to me now though, its all comin' back to me.

Cells of stem (Stem cells)

     Stem cells that reside is our bodies as we grow and mature are the construction workers of the society of the inner workings of our bodies.  That is, when we are 5 day old fetuses any way.  Stem cells, depending on what type, from from 2 places.  Embryonic Stem cells come from, well, a 5 day old fetus.  And semantic or non-embryonic stem cells come from the organ, and our tissues.  If you think about it, the word EMBRYOnic kind of gives away the origin of the cell. 
     I learned that the stem cells that are derived from embryos are only, well, DERIVED from embryos.  Not taken from an imprenated lady.  I mean, the ladies have to donate the egg, but the ladies aren't pregnant when they "abtain" the egg.  ANYWAY, from there, the confusing stuff is all done in the lab. 
     Wtih stem cell research that is taking place, there is a wide variety of great things that are possible to take place in the medical feild.  Cause if the studies that the scientist are doing on the star fish and rats turn out to work, then i would like them to use it on me.  I got a finger thats missin a nail, and is fractured.  O and it hurts like heck.  Thing is, I gotta wrestle next thursday, cause its the LAMAR dual.  Maybe stem cell research could get me fixed before then. 

Mitosis

Mitosis occurs in different phases.  There is a beginning stage of it where the cell is at rest, and does not change its' nucleus in any way.  This is also known as interphase.  But then, the cell enters a phase called prophase.  Pro, meaning beginning or before, is the first actual phase of mitosis.  In prophase, the cells chromosomes begin to shorten and thicken and start to begin to segregate.
     Then in the metaphase, the spindles inside the cell begin to separate and align inside the middle of the cell.  Then, anaphase kicks in.  This is when the spindles have each separated evenly to one side of the cell and begin to split it in two.  Then in Telophase, the cell is pretty much completely split in two, and the cytoplasm of the once one complete cell, has been divided by a not yet complete new cell wall.  Then the wall forms and it has been divided into 2 daughter cells.

     In a lab that me and a few class mates recently participated in, we examined the number of cells that were in interphase, anaphase, prophase, metaphase, telophase within a certain view through a microscope.  Out of around 250 cells that were in view, 46% of them were in prophase, and 47% of them were in interphase.  Those 2 phases were pretty much the majority.  Then 2% or so was the amount for telo, meta, and anaphases.  This kinda gives you an idea of how long each phase takes compared to the other.  The phases that have the most being seen must take longer to complete thats why you see so many of them.  The smaller percentage is less time taken to complete the process so then you don't see so many of them.