Writing in Biology

The Ct (the number of cycles to reach threshold) results from qPCR were then analyzed by calculating the fold-change using the ∆∆Ct method: ∆Ct (treated1) = 3.245, ∆Ct (treated2) = 5.54, ∆Ct (treated3) = 1.21, ∆Ct (control1) = -0.21, ∆Ct (control2) = -5.715, ∆Ct (control3) = -1.75. The control ∆Ct’s had a mean of -2.558333 and standard deviation of 2.840125 while the treatment ∆Ct’s had a mean of 3.331667 and standard deviation of 2.166301. A box plot of these ∆Ct was created on R (Figure 8).

The ∆Ct values allowed us to calculate the ∆∆Ct to be 5.89, so the fold-change between the control and treated samples was 0.016863, indicating a sharp decrease in expression of the Bradi1g72430 gene in treated samples. A T-test performed on R revealed the p-value to be 0.04993, meaning there is a significant statistical difference in the fold-change between control and treated samples. The expression of Bradi1g72430 in roots decreases in response to IAA treatment and subsequent increased growth.

    With sandbox game modes, the player is able to choose the way they play without any sort of quests or challenges to guide them through the game. These kinds of games allow the player to progress as fast or as slowly as they want, and to play the game in any way that they want. An example of a sandbox mode MMORPG is Old School Runescape, where the game is set in a medieval time with a very large world and different skills a player can level up to unlock more content. With a setting like this, the options are endless and there’s a lot of unlockable content. Yet with all this freedom, recently a Youtuber named Settled decided to fix his own rules, and lock his character in just a specific area of the map, called Morytania. This portion of the map is very swampy, and thus he named his character “Swampleptics”. By restricting his character to a specific portion of the map, he’s forcing himself to come up with new ways to train abilities and to level up his skills. By documenting this new way of playing the game, the content becomes an interesting way of looking at the game that a lot of people don’t look at it anymore; a feeling of exploration. For a game as old as Old School Runescape, which has all the most efficient leveling up methods explored already, to discover new things that have still been in the game for so long brings up a feeling of nostalgia for old players that they haven’t felt since playing the game as a kid.

Every high school graduate should understand topics in global climate patterns, terrestrial biomes, coping with the environment and heat, evolutionary ecology, life history, behavioral ecology, population distributions, growth, dynamics, and regulation, symbiotic relationships, communities, biogeography, diversity, productivity, food webs, nutrient cycling, and conservation biology. I believe that all these topics should be covered to some extent in high school because it opens up a new perspective to have a broader understanding of everything in ecology. In high school we covered all these topics briefly except for population dynamics, diversity, productivity, conservation biology, and biogeography.

I think it would be beneficial to go into these topics more especially since a major driving force for ecological relationships and balance within ecosystems is how populations function, and can be affected by certain factors. Especially because humans are a major cause of population fluctuations and extinction. This is why i also think conservation biology should be a focus because with thousands of species becoming extinct each day and year, we have to work hard to stabilize and increase populations of endangered species, and prevent further species from going extinct.

Overtime birds have become more specialized in the way they eat their food. Typically birds swallow their prey whole, whether the bird is consuming seeds, fruits, or insects whole. However raptors are a category of bird that cannot do this. Raptors hunt larger prey than other types of birds, so their sharp, hooked beaks allow them to pierce prey, tug away skin, pluck out feathers, tear meat into smaller-sized chunks that are easier to swallow. Insectivores use their slender, tweezer-like beaks enable them to catch insects midair, pick insects off leaves, or probe between small crevices of tree bark, or for drilling holes into wood. This contrasts with seed-eating birds have short, thick, and strong beaks equipped for cracking open hardy seeds. The size of the beak can indicate the type of seed or nut the bird is adapted to eat. The variation in beak size within the raptors, seed-eaters, and insectivores observed across grasslands, woodlands, and marsh habitats can be explained by the specialized diets in different habitat types.

• The American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) feeds on seeds almost exclusively including sunflowers, thistle, asters, and seeds from grasses, alder, birch, red cedar, and elm. They balance on seedheads of plants to pluck the seeds. Crack open seeds with their short, stout, cone-shaped beaks. The Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum) feeds mainly on fruits and seeds year round, supplemented by protein-rich insects, by swallowing piece of fruit whole. They feed while perched on twigs, but can also grab fruit while flying close to branches. To hunt insects, they may use exposed branches or open water areas to zig-zag through the air and catch insects.

With the rise of scientific issues such as genetic engineering in public debates, “science is becoming more politicized and controversial with widespread societal implications” (Rose, Korzekwa, Brossard, Scheufele & Heisler, 2017). As such, the importance of public attitudes towards these issues is increasing, as is engaging the public with these topics in order to increase knowledge and awareness (Rose, Korzekwa, Brossard, Scheufele & Heisler, 2017). People’s attitudes are influenced by their knowledge, and so people with different backgrounds will often have varying attitudes towards complex topics depending on how familiar they are with them. The University of Massachusetts Amherst has over 100 different undergraduate majors, and presumably people in different majors will have had different levels of exposure to the topic of genome editing. In this study we investigated whether or not there is any observable connection between college major and people’s attitudes towards the use of genome editing to treat genetic disorders.

Genome-editing has been met with both celebration and skepticism from the scientific community and the general public, with concerns about the viability, ethics, and long- and short-term consequences of modifying the human genome. As genetic disorders are caused by DNA abnormalities, they can only be “cured” by targeting the disorder at the genomic level, recently made possible by new advances in molecular technology. Both somatic cells and germline cells can be edited, and while any changes made to the DNA of an individual's somatic cells will only affect that individual, changes made to their germline DNA could be inherited by their future children. The technology at present cannot guarantee that “unintended modifications created through an editing procedure would not result in a devastating long-term outcome such as cancer or adverse developmental effects if one were to modify a zygote” (Kohn, Porteus & Scharenberg, 2016), which has lead to mixed scientific and public opinions about its use.

Genome editing (or gene editing) is a type of genetic engineering that involves modifying a living organism’s genome. Specific regions of the genome are deliberately targeted and DNA sequences are inserted, deleted, or otherwise modified to modify the sequence at that location and alter gene function, either by preventing or enabling expression, or by changing how the gene is expressed (“Genome editing in brief: what, why and how?”, n.d.). Genetic disorders can affect both somatic (body) cells and germline cells (cells involved in reproduction, such as sperm and eggs). While genetic mutations in the DNA of somatic cells only affect the individual and cannot be inherited, changes in the germline DNA are heritable and can affect future offspring (Ormond et al. 2017)

A possible explanation for these results is identified in a review of the different responses of skin temperature to physical exercise: during the first few minutes of high intensity exercises such as jumping jacks there is an initial reduction in the temperature of the skin as blood flow is redirected to the active muscles (Neves et al. 2015). Because we were measuring body temperature by taking the temperature at the temple we may have been just measuring skin temperature, and the slight decrease could therefore be explained by the skin’s initial cooling period at the onset of exercise. The fact that we were recording body temperature at the forehead is one of the variables that may have affected our results, as we were not directly measuring core temperature. Additionally we could not control for the natural differences in body temperature between females and males, nor for the weight and fitness levels of each person. In terms of the exercise, 1 minute may not have been enough time to truly test its effects on body temperature, and we could not control for the amount of effort put in by each member of the group during the exercise. To create a clearer picture of thermoregulation, this experiment could be repeated with longer periods of exercise, and using more accurate methods of recording core body temperature than forehead thermometers. Additionally the measurements should all be taken at the same time of day to control for natural temperature fluctuations with circadian rhythms, and the gender, weight, and height of the subjects should be kept as constant as possible.