Writing in Biology

The cheetaur is a member of the order Carnivora, family Felidae, and genus Acinonyx. Acinonyx is a genus with only one extant member, the cheetah, and are cats that do not have retractable claws. Cheetaur is the common name for the Acinonyx equuasis. It is named like the mythical centaur (half man, half horse) for its horse-like legs. Their defining features are their long legs and extremely reduced paws with one toe, hence the species name equuasis (“equus” horse). The cheetaur features a mesaxonic foot with a single toed, hairy paw and non retractable claw. The single claw is curved like a hook for better grip on prey. It’s frame is also larger than the standard cheetah. A cheetah stands at about 2.5 feet from the shoulder (Cheetah Facts, 2018). From shoulder to the ground, an adult cheetaur stands at 4 to 5 feet. With these adaptations, the cheetaur is able to run quite fast for longer. The trade offs for longer limbs and larger body mass is that it cannot reach 112 kilometers per hour (70 miles per hour) like those in its genus. It is also not able to easily able to sneak on prey in areas where the grass is not tall enough. To help it blend in with the grass that is tall enough for coverage, cheetaurs (both male and female) are usually a shade of yellowish brown with dark spots.  

0.515 grams of Benzoin and 4 mL of ethanol were added to a 25 mL flask and swirled until fully dissolved. 0.10 grams of sodium borohydride was added over a 5-minute period and swirled for 20 minutes at room temperature. The mixture was then cooled in an ice bath. 5 mL of distilled water and 0.3 mL of 5M HCl was added to the mixture. After 15 minutes an additional 2.5 mL of distilled water was added to the sample and the product was collected via vacuum filtration. The product was dried on the filter paper for 15 minutes. The yield and melting point of the crude product was determined. The crude product was then recrystallized from acetone in a flask and the crystals were allowed to dry before the melting point and mass of the purified 1,2-diphenylethan-1,2-diol were determined. After recrystallization a small amount of the starting material (benzoin), the crude product, and the recrystallized product were all dissolved individually in vials with ethyl acetate. Two TLC plates were spotted. One TLC plate was spotted with the starting material, the recrystallized product, and a mixture of the starting material and the recrystallized product. The second TLC plate was spotted with the starting material, the crude product, and a mixture of the starting material and the crude product. Both TLC plates were run in a 9:1 CH₂Cl₂ : ethanol and then analyzed.

Most birds are monogamous: it is when they form simple pairs of one male and one female on one territory. Sexual selection is manifest in the initial stages of competition among males for a breeding territory and then in the decisions by females to reside with particular males on their property. Where they can control high-quality territories, some species such as the Red-winged Blackbird of North America are polygynous, often pairing with two or more females. They also exhibit striking sexual dimorphism (the differences in appearance between males and females of the same species, such as in color, shape, size, and structure, that are caused by the inheritance of one or the other sexual pattern in the genetic material) and large variation in their sexual success.

    Domestic horses, also known as Equus caballus, display multiple behaviors based on the conditions they are exposed to. Horses tend to graze for long periods of time throughout the day (Goodwin 2010), and their environment has a major impact on the way they tend to graze (Lewis 1989). In warmer weather, the horses graze in various spots on a field in comparison to colder weather, where horses huddle up and graze in a couple of selected spots. It's estimated they graze about 15-17 hours per day (Sharon 1986). Horses tend to “stick together” and live in groups (Lansberg 2018), as horses feel more protected in these settings due to having more companions that are willing to look out for predators and food. This ultimately results in a greater chance of survival. Groups also allow a source of protection for one's resources such as: food, water, and territory. A common behavior that has been observed amongst young “colts” or male horses, is that they tend to follow the older horses within the pack (Hill 2010). This behavior allows colts to learn behaviors from their older peers while at an early age. These examples demonstrate that depending on their surroundings, domestic horses behave differently based on their environment and what stimuli they are exposed to.

About three quarters of all species on Earth died out in the Late Devonian mass extinction, though as a series of extinctions over several million years, rather than one event. Life that existed in shallow waters and seas were the the most affected; reefs were hit so hard that it was not until corals evolved over 100 million years later that reefs returned to their former glory. Aside from reef-building organisms, other groups that were hit hard include the brachiopods and the trilobites. During this time period, much of the sea bed became devoid of oxygen, which made it only sustainable for bacteria. Changes in sea level, asteroid impacts, climate change and new species of plants messing with the soil have all been probable causes for these extinctions. A major extinction, the Kellwasser event marked the beginning of the last phase of the Devonian period, the Famennian faunal stage about 375-360 million years ago. A second mass extinction, the Hangenberg event, closed the Devonian period. It is still unclear as to the extent of time during these extinctions, as it is uncertain whether there were two sharp mass extinctions or a series of smaller extinctions.

Think of knowledge as if it’s a currency. Teachers are those who are very wealthy in knowledge, therefore are of a wealthier ‘class’, compared to students who are much less knowledgeable about the subject. When teachers are able to pour in a lot of effort and pass on their knowledge, they are helping everyone around them rise up to become better. The net benefit is overall positive, and society (the classroom in this metaphor) is doing better in the end. Of course, this metaphor falls off a bit where the teachers aren’t actually losing anything besides time. They still retain their ‘currency’, they’re just losing a different form of it that’s equal amongst everyone in society (time). I think it’s an interesting way to view teaching, since I don’t think the two are ever looked at as if they’re similar. Of course, politics should stay out of the classroom which is also why this metaphor is probably not that popular, but it definitely is something interesting to think about.

    For most students, when asked what someone’s GPA stands for, the most common answers include “the average of all your grades”, and “how smart someone is”. The first statement is inherently true, as GPA stands for “grade point average”, but how well does the second statement hold? Does someone’s GPA accurately represent how smart someone is? A value for someone’s GPA comes from how well they do in all their individual courses, whether that be maths, english, history, science, etc. The average from all these classes is then weighted then checked to see how well a student is able to perform on average, in any class. Yet is that testing how smart a student is? I personally, would argue no. Your GPA only represents how well you fair in a variety of classes, not necessarily how smart you are. In what class gauges your ability to approach unknown variables and seemingly connect them in creative ways? The Remote Associates Test is a test that is commonly used in order compare different students and their ability to be creative against one another, yet in what class is this test commonly used? As a reader, have you ever heard of this test until now?  The test gives 3 words that are associated by a 4th, and as the test taker you are to try and figure out the 4th word. For example, the 3 given words could be light/break/dream, and you would have to figure out the 4th word. Give up? The 4th word is ‘day’ (Daylight, Daybreak, Daydream). Tests like these in my opinion really do test an individual’s creativity, and it baffles me that tests like these aren’t used more often in school to accurately determine how smart a student is.

          In this experiment, a purified sample of 1, 2-diphenylethane-1, 2-diol was obtained through the reduction of benzoin with sodium borohydride and the recrystallization of the product with acetone, resulting in 71.73% yield. The product was identified to be 1, 2-diphenylethane-1, 2-diol via TLC analysis and comparison of the experimental melting point to the known melting point. The known melting point of 1, 2-diphenylethane-1, 2-diol is 138 °C, while the experimental melting point was 135-137 °C. That the experimental range is slightly lower than the known range indicates the presence of impurities in the sample, but the relatively narrow experimental range indicates that whatever impurities remain in the final sample are likely present in only small amounts. During TLC analysis, visualization was achieved via short-wave UV light and iodine staining. Iodine produced yellow stains when reacted with the pure benzoin sample in lane A of both plate 1 and plate 2, but not the samples of only the recrystallized or crude product in lane B of plates 1 and 2 respectively. This contributed to the identification of the spots derived from a mixture of benzoin and my experimental samples in lane C of both plates, in that the spot that reacted with iodine was likely benzoin, and the spot that did not react with iodine was likely the crude/recrystallized product. Rf numbers were obtained for benzoin, the crude product, and the recrystallized product. Higher Rf numbers indicate higher polarity. Benzoin is less polar than 1,2-diphenylethane-1,2-diol because alcohols are more polar than carbonyls and 1,2-diphenylethane-1,2-diol has two alcohol groups where benzoin only has one. Since benzoin is less polar, it would be expected to travel farther on the TLC plate and have higher Rf values because it has less absorption with the polar silica gel on the TLC plate than 1,2-diphenylethane-1,2-diol. In the experimental TLC analysis, spots derived from benzoin did move further than spots derived from 1,2-diphenylethane-1,2-diol. Benzoin had an average Rf value of 0.717, which is slightly beyond the ideal 0.3-0.7 range. The crude product had an average Rf value of 0.575, while the recrystallized product had an average Rf value of 0.5875. There were two additional spots derived from the recrystallized product, labelled 2 and 3 in lane B of plate 1, with an average Rf value of 0.85. This is well beyond the ideal range of 0.3 - 0.7. These spots could possibly be attributed to impurities in the sample. The Rf values exceeding 0.7 could indicate that ethyl acetate was not the best possible solvent for those substances. 

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are believed to be the main drivers of metastasis, chemoresistance, and relapse of pancreatic adenocarcinoma due to their plasticity and cooperation with the tumor microenvironment (TME) to further the disease (Sancho et al. 2016). Due to these diverse effects, eradication of CSCs poses a challenge. CSCs are also able to undergo metabolic reprogramming depending on stressors in the TME, and current literature suggests that it is the metabolic plasticity of CSCs themselves that allows for survival in different environmental stressors, leading to further metastasis (Peiris-Pagès et al. 2016). Pancreatic cancer stem cells (PaCSCs) in particular are highly dependent on mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) to survive, which serves as their preferred mechanism for energy production (Sancho et al. 2015). Another hallmark of CSCs is the notion of self-renewal, most commonly driven in PaCSCs through the Notch, Wnt/β-catenin, and Hedgehog signaling pathways (Wong et al. 2019). Therefore, the researchers plan to target PaCSCs through OXPHOS as well as self-renewal signaling in order to most effectively eradicate this metastatic driver.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) was used as a homology-based method.  We performed a Standard Nucleotide BLAST of the RZW genomic DNA using the Highly Similar Sequences (megablast) program in the Expressed Sequence Tags (EST) database for Brachypodium distachyon (taxid: 15368) in order to identify ESTs that correspond to our unknown gene.  All matches with greater than 95% Ident were saved. All of the saved ESTs were imported into the CAP3 software. CAP3 generated consensus sequences bases on the overlap between numerous ESTs. To find a full length cDNA sequence for our gene, we performed a Standard Nucleotide BLAST of the RZW genomic DNA using the Highly Similar Sequences (megablast) program in the Nucleotide Collection (nr/nt) database for Brachypodium distachyon (taxid: 15368).  We found accession number XM_003562897.4, an mRNA sequence that is predicted to code for the Brachypodium distachyon G-type lectin S-receptor-like serine/threonine-protein kinase B120 (LOC100825184). The two consensus sequences formed were aligned to the cDNA sequence using the NCBI BLAST.  To find the official identity of the RZW gene, we performed a Phytozome BLAST search of the RZW genomic DNA with Brachypodium distachyon v3.1 as the target species.  The best match to the query sequence was Bradi1g25180.1, and the predicted protein sequence was saved. The FGENESH and Phytozome predicted protein sequences were compared and the working map was updated.  From the Phytozome locus page, the functional annotation was saved as a graphic showing domains. The link to Uniprot was followed and there were 16 annotations that contained information about different domains.