the grossest thing id say i dissected, wud have to be the worm *eww* and the female frog cuz it had all the eggs inside and it was like watery....
like the first time i ever dissected anything *the worm* i almost barfed..after that it was like i got used to it lool...i had my partner cut the stuff up, he was like excited about it, i was all like yea go ahead, dont mind me im just here about to barf. then i had to poke the skin to a pin to keep its inners open
i feel bad though when i gotta dissect stuff, cuz i know its all for learnin purposes or what not, but still...
oh yea and i remember some other stuff...
like this girl cried over the pig we had to dissect *i just watched* cuz she thought it was killed just for dissecting purposes she was like about to pass out..and in another class we cud hear girls screaming cuz guys were chasing them around with big dead bullfrogs
fi aman allah
w'salaam
I was just wondering....okay....how do I put it......
THIS IS a thread for those of us who study biology. Here, (I expect u to) share ur coursework ideas and all the other lardee daa stuff that goes on.
Allah ma3akum
Dropped AP Bio a few days ago, and what a relief! Its not in the least bit interesting... But I'd die to dissect something... I cut up a fish once, but that was it...
Plz could anyone provide a really good website about the heart. I am finding it annoying not being able to learn all the stuff that goes on:where the blood enters first and which side the de oxygenated blood is released from. Its all so confusing!
salam alaikum
while on the topic of biology I would like to talk a little about Muslim contributions to biology.
Did you guys know that it was the Muslims who first built Hospitals for treatment of Patients?
AMAZING BUT TRUE!!
Did you guys know that Muslims were carrying out sophisticated surgery on humans, including the human eye long before any other civilization?
AMAZING BUT TRUE!!
Did you guys know that it was Muslims who presented the first detailed diagreams of the human eye, digestive tracts to the world?
AMAZING BUT TRUE!!
Did you guys know that it was the Muslims who first established the studies of Zoology and Botany, classifying over 30,000 plants and even went as far as into oceanography studies?
AMAZING BUT TRUE!!
Did you guys know that a Muslim man named Akulion got straight A's in all his biology cources all the way up to A levels?
AMAZING BUT TRUE!!
So much we take for granted - yet our heritage is so amazing!
Allah hu Akbar!
Assalam-u-alaikum
I thought I should share this. High school biology is piece of cake compared to university biology. I mean I ended up getting straight A s in biology in high school by sleeping only 4-5 hours a day. This gave me a competitive edge over others since I managed to finish a lot and learn a lot compared to another. That's when I developed this passion for biology. But seriously, to survive in the university I had to change my tactics completely. I couldn't just sleep 4-5 hours b/c I had to travel total of 4 hours while commuting between the university and home. Anyways. I managed to make drastic changes to my daily habits in order to do well in the university. I ended up working with Dr. Ellen Larsen on an experiment where we tried to did some genetic crosses on fruit flies in order to study the plastic nature of the segmentation genes. It was just fun. Too bad. My experimental stocks got infested by mites and I had to terminate them before they ended. :-) If you want to read, here is my draft report. I will not be posting my experimental design here because that material is confidential :-) Also, Ellie's comments are italicized.
Creating a Designer Fruit Fly—Introducing a 15th non-head segment into Drosophila Melanogaster
Draft written by: Arzoo Zaheer
Presented to: Dr. Larsen
Course: Volunteer Research Project
Note: This is just a draft and not a final copy. I haven't put all the reference in yet.
Introduction:
In Drosophila melanogaster, mesodermal thickening and ectodermal furrows divide the embryo into parasegments (Chapter9). These parasegments are used as a guide to separate the embryo into segments and thus generate the adult fly. An adult fruit fly has 15 body segments which are established from 14 metameric divisions (parasegments) along the anterior-posterior axis (Chapter 9). The parasegments do not become the segments; rather a parasegment includes the posterior part of an anterior segment and the anterior portion of the segment behind it (Lawrence, 1992). Determination of the Anterior-Posterior (A/P) Axis:
The body plan along the A/P axis is determined by a cascade of regulatory events which involve the maternal effect genes, the gap genes, the pair rule genes (eve and ftz), the segment polarity gene (wg, en) etc. (Lawrence 1992). The maternal affect genes, expressed in the ovaries, are responsible for the initial activation of zygotic genes such as bicoid, hunchback, nanos and caudal. These maternal factors cause cytoplasmic polarity and eventually create Hunchback protein gradient. This gradient differentially activates the gap genes and thus the process of segmentation begins. Gap genes, the first class of segmentation genes in turn activate the pair-rule genes which belong to the second class of segmentation genes (Chapter 9). For instance, Reinitz and Sharp used the gene circuit method to show that eve is activated by bicoid and other general transcription factors. They also showed that local repression of eve by other gap genes causes the formation of the stripes. (Reinitz and Sharp, 1995)
The proper activation of pair rule genes depends on combinatorial regulation by various maternal affect genes and gap gene products. Seven stripes of pair-rule gene even-skipped (eve) are seen during the mid-and late-mitotic cycle 14--the first mitotic cycle after cellularization of the syncytial blastoderm (Chan, 2001). The eve promoter constitutes of a series of enhancers which direct the expression of the 7 eve stripes segmentation stripes in the fruit fly. Kind of studies?Studies have revealed that these enhancers work properly only if they are separated by a minimum distance (Small et al, 1993). Seven other stripes made by pair-rule gene fushi tarazu (ftz) alternate with the seven eve stripes creating 14 discrete, metameric divisions called parasegments from which adult segments are derived (Chan,2001). Genetic studies have revealed that the borders of the eve and the ftz stripes are formed by the repression, not activation, of certain genes. For instances, the gap gene giant (gt) is involved in a repression mechanism which situates the anterior border of eve stripe 2 (Andrioli et al, 2002).
By the start of gastrulation, the cells located at the anterior border of eve and ftz stripes express the segment polarity gene engrailed (en). Engrailed is localized during mitotic cycle 14 which occurs about 2-4 hours after egg laying (Chan, 2001). Within each en stripe, the en-expressing cells activate transcription of hedgehog (hh) gene. The hedgehog protein binds to the hh-receptor found on the cells immediately anterior to en-expression cells. This binding activates a pathway which leads to the expression of wingless (wg) gene in the cells anterior to each en stripe and between the ftz and eve stripes. Wingless protein then activates engrailed gene. Thus a reciprocal loop is established where the en-expressing cells secrete hh, which preserves the expression of the wg in the neighbouring cells, while the wg secreting cells uphold the expression of the en and hh genes in the neighbouring cells (Chapter 9). The en domain delineates the anterior section of a parasegment while the wg domain defines the posterior section of a parasegment (Chan, 2001). Such an interface b/w en and wg at the anterior and posterior parasegments is necessary for proper segmentation (Chapter 9).
After the boundaries of the segments are formed via the Wingless/Hedgehog signalling pathway, the homeotic genes are now activated. These genes specify the structure of each segment.
The expression of the 15 parasegments in Drosophila melanogaster depends upon a highly complex and intricate interactions between a number of genes. Speculations have been raised regarding the plasticity of expression of these segments. How would the genetic machinery respond to an increased number of parasegments? Cell Cycle:
Cell division allows multicellular individuals to grow and develop from a cell and also functions to renew, repair and replace cells in a fully grown individual (Campbell et al, 1999). A eukaryotic cell division cycle can be subdivided into four different phases—Gap1 (G1), Synthesis (S), Gap 2 (G 2) and Mitosis (M). The timing and rate of cell division in different parts of the living being contributes crucially to its proper growth, development and maintenance (Campbell et al, 1999). The sequential events in a cell cycle are regulated by cell-cycle control system. A set of molecules trigger and manage key events of cell division. The cell cycle is tightly regulated at the cell cycle checkpoints by regulatory molecules such as cyclin-dependent serine/threonine kinases (Cdks) and cyclins (Jones et al, 2000). Studies have revealed that zygotic Drosophila melanogaster CycE (DMCycE) gene produces CycE that is required for the G1 to S transition in the fruit fly embryos. DMCycE must complex with Cdk-2 to cause this transition (Jackman et al, 2002). The DMCycE is regulated by both trans-regulatory and cis-regulatory sequences which are tissue and stage specific (Jones et al, 2000). Drosophila melanogaster embryogenesis is divided up into three stages: a three hour period of 13 synchronous mitotic cycles while the embryo is a syncytial blastoderm (Li et al, 1999). This is followed by three cell divisions (14-16) during which the cellular blastoderm undergoes cell differentiation (Li et al, 1999). Mitotic cycle 14-16 lack a detectable G1 phase (Jones et al, 2000). Cycle 17 epidermal thoracic patch cells are the first embryonic cells which exhibit a G1 phase (Jones et al, 2000). Down regulation of DMCycE during cell cycle 16 is essential for cycle 17 G1 arrest in the epidermal cells before embryogenesis occur (Jones et al, 2000). About 1 hour after the 14th interphase has begun, 25 mitotic domains separate the cellular blastoderm into a fine-scale pattern. This partitioning is an early expression of differing cell fates (Joe, Year unknown). What about the problem of extra cells being evicted from the ectoderm? The paper from Henry Krause’s lab would make your H99 stuff more understandable?
Experiment part is cut out.
Copyrighted: Arzoo Zaheer
Assalalm-u-Alaikum
I just noticed, without the experiment part (where i discussed the experimental design and rationale) this paper looks really small. :-(
Assalam-u-alaikum
I hate the paper limitations professors impose on their students :-( I wish I were able to write a lot but I can't b/c of these paper limitations. Believe me, in our university if someone were to go beyond the paper limit, their marks are cut. The logic (behind asking to write within the given limit) is that students should learn to present a lot of information in a consice manner. But I see as an infringements to my right to write as much as I wish. :-(
Assalam-u-alaikum
Just one last advice. If someone wants to do biology at University of Toronto, don't go the Mississauga campus (a.k.a. Erindale college) Ironically, the biology department in this 'brown campus' (its called brown campus b/c majority of people there including me :-) are brown) is filled with racist people. Now that I think about this. The racism that was geared towards me impeded my academic growth tremendously as it did for certain other friends of mine. Its just a shame. I used to think oh its some personal experience. Maybe its just me. Maybe I am just too sensitive. But one day, I was sitting with my 'brown' sisters and they were all commenting how unfairly their professors and other members of the laboratory are treating them. That's when I realized that this racism towards us is real not just something I am conjuring up. I think it was a waste of time taking biology at Erindale campus. If you really want to study biology at UofT, go to Scarborough or Downtown campus. They are superb. Also, UofT is tough. Students who take 70s here easily get 90s at York. So if you are coming to UofT prepare for a very challenging academic career.
I would also like to mention that there are many good professors at UofT even in the biology department. I remember Prof. Paul (he is retired now) who took me in as a part-time Herbarium assistant and taught me the work there. He also gave me an excellent reference letter. Then there was professor Espie who gave me advise on my career and always provided a reference letter when I asked him to. There is professor Angela and she is an angel really. :-)
Oh by the way, other departments at Erindale college are not racist at all. I loved the time I spent at the philosophy and the maths department. As I would go from biology to philosophy department, my breathing would return to normal. I mean the atmosphere in other departments was more likeable and friendly.
I hope my advice helps some people InshaAllah.
take care
Assalam-u-Alaikum
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brothers and sisters,
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