The Biology Thread

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Wherein we discuss whatever Nigel and I happen to be learning at the moment in order to get a better grasp on it than anyone else in our respective classes. Come one come all, and feel free to tangent into other sciences as long as they relate to the bio du jour. My exam on Monday covers chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Anyway, Nigel and I have the same textbook, excepting that mine is a Bunker Hill specific edition, so the chapters and pacing should be relatively the same.

I also have finals in about 3 weeks.

Chapter 7: Membrane Structure and Funtion
Chapter 8: An Introduction to Metabolism\
Chapter 9: Cellular Respiration and Fermentation
Chapter 10: Photosynthesis

I've got nothing at this specific moment to discuss, since I'm Fridaying, but wanted to get the thread going. Expect more of these, as a kind of informal study-group, even if you don't happen to be studying it formally type thing.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I spent way more time on cellular respiration than the midterm warranted.

Today we did a lot of diffusion and osmosis in lab.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I spent way more time on cellular respiration than the midterm warranted.

Today we did a lot of diffusion and osmosis in lab.

I'm a bit lost on photosynthesis because I was running on 3 hours of sleep and class was at 10 am. Funny thing my sleep deprivation was due to doing a shit load of biology work the night before and, well, I'm sure you're well aware of the effects of late night studying. I was at risk a few times of falling over backwards. When Professor Kasili called break for the class, I immediately took my glasses off and put my head on my notebook for about 5 minutes. When I picked myself up to throw out my coffee cup I noticed he put a piece of paper next to me and when I went to throw out the cup, he was like, "are you awake, Kevin?" and I responded "ah, I didn't sleep well last night." He was smiling a bit, so I think he was more on the amused side than the offended.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I spent way more time on cellular respiration than the midterm warranted.

Today we did a lot of diffusion and osmosis in lab.

I'm a bit lost on photosynthesis because I was running on 3 hours of sleep and class was at 10 am. Funny thing my sleep deprivation was due to doing a shit load of biology work the night before and, well, I'm sure you're well aware of the effects of late night studying. I was at risk a few times of falling over backwards. When Professor Kasili called break for the class, I immediately took my glasses off and put my head on my notebook for about 5 minutes. When I picked myself up to throw out my coffee cup I noticed he put a piece of paper next to me and when I went to throw out the cup, he was like, "are you awake, Kevin?" and I responded "ah, I didn't sleep well last night." He was smiling a bit, so I think he was more on the amused side than the offended.

Where are you in photosynthesis? We just started that last lecture, we got to Calvin cycles.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I spent way more time on cellular respiration than the midterm warranted.

Today we did a lot of diffusion and osmosis in lab.

I'm a bit lost on photosynthesis because I was running on 3 hours of sleep and class was at 10 am. Funny thing my sleep deprivation was due to doing a shit load of biology work the night before and, well, I'm sure you're well aware of the effects of late night studying. I was at risk a few times of falling over backwards. When Professor Kasili called break for the class, I immediately took my glasses off and put my head on my notebook for about 5 minutes. When I picked myself up to throw out my coffee cup I noticed he put a piece of paper next to me and when I went to throw out the cup, he was like, "are you awake, Kevin?" and I responded "ah, I didn't sleep well last night." He was smiling a bit, so I think he was more on the amused side than the offended.

Where are you in photosynthesis? We just started that last lecture, we got to Calvin cycles.

We did the whole thing in one lecture. We started photosynthesis at 10 am on Thursday and ended at 12:30ish on Thursday. We have no more labs, so labs are more lecture now.

[Reginald Ret]

Membranes.

Membranes are about 5 nanometer, that is about 50 atoms,  thick. They are made of certain lipid molecules.
These membrane lipid molecules consist of 2 parts, one part is polar. This part  likes to hang out with water because water is also polar and it is always nice to be around people you can really connect with, you know.
The other part of these lipids is not polar at all. In fact, it is so apolar that it is always excluded by water and it's polar friends. You would think this makes the apolar molecules sad, but they are totally unaware of being rejected. It almost seems as if they prefer their own kind as well but that is an illusion. This illusion is created because all the apolar molecules constantly get pushed out of all the polar groups they encounter untill they bump into another apolar molecule. Finally they have found someone who doesn't push them away. As long as there is this excluding pressure from polar molecules around them, they stick together. Not because they are connected but because they have nothing better to do.
All this has the nice effect of automatically creating a double layer of lipid molecules, with their apolar bits pushed together. Maybe you would think that this would just create lipid balls and that would be that. But what happens if more lipids get jammed into one of those balls? Soon it would lengthen into a bilayered sheet. Still not a bubble, right? Now imagine one lost little water molecule getting himself stuck in the middle of these lipids. Oh the horror! he is all alone now, no polar friends to keep him company. But wait! here come the lipids to the rescue! the lipids, seeing the suffering of the the poor innocent water molecule flip around so their polar heads are now offering much needed social contact to the water. A bubble is born.

A cell, having a membrane can now do some cool things.
It can now maintain a difference in concentration of all kinds of handy or annoying molecules. As long as those molecules are polar.
As you can imagine, this opens up many possibilities. If the cell wants to keep apolar molecules in it will need to make them polar first, otherwise they will just get stuck in the membrane with only the lipids for company.
Legend has it that one of the first cells realised it needed a way of changing the inner concentration of stuff, instead of just maintaining it. So it looked in its membrane and found some weird molecules there. 'These are not lipids!' she exclaimed, yet they can stay inside the lipid bilayer. How could this be? Upon closer examination the cell noticed that the part of these molecules that spent all it's time in the bilayer were apolar! 'So that is how it works!' This, she could use. With a bit of poking and prodding the molecules were shaped into pumps and more complicated devices. 'I shall name them proteins! As prometheus gave fire to the humans allowing them all sorts of new possibilities these proteins allow me a similar increase in awesomeness!'



N.B. Is this sort of thing desired here?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Membranes.

Membranes are about 5 nanometer, that is about 50 atoms,  thick. They are made of certain lipid molecules.
These membrane lipid molecules consist of 2 parts, one part is polar. This part  likes to hang out with water because water is also polar and it is always nice to be around people you can really connect with, you know.
The other part of these lipids is not polar at all. In fact, it is so apolar that it is always excluded by water and it's polar friends. You would think this makes the apolar molecules sad, but they are totally unaware of being rejected. It almost seems as if they prefer their own kind as well but that is an illusion. This illusion is created because all the apolar molecules constantly get pushed out of all the polar groups they encounter untill they bump into another apolar molecule. Finally they have found someone who doesn't push them away. As long as there is this excluding pressure from polar molecules around them, they stick together. Not because they are connected but because they have nothing better to do.
All this has the nice effect of automatically creating a double layer of lipid molecules, with their apolar bits pushed together. Maybe you would think that this would just create lipid balls and that would be that. But what happens if more lipids get jammed into one of those balls? Soon it would lengthen into a bilayered sheet. Still not a bubble, right? Now imagine one lost little water molecule getting himself stuck in the middle of these lipids. Oh the horror! he is all alone now, no polar friends to keep him company. But wait! here come the lipids to the rescue! the lipids, seeing the suffering of the the poor innocent water molecule flip around so their polar heads are now offering much needed social contact to the water. A bubble is born.

A cell, having a membrane can now do some cool things.
It can now maintain a difference in concentration of all kinds of handy or annoying molecules. As long as those molecules are polar.
As you can imagine, this opens up many possibilities. If the cell wants to keep apolar molecules in it will need to make them polar first, otherwise they will just get stuck in the membrane with only the lipids for company.
Legend has it that one of the first cells realised it needed a way of changing the inner concentration of stuff, instead of just maintaining it. So it looked in its membrane and found some weird molecules there. 'These are not lipids!' she exclaimed, yet they can stay inside the lipid bilayer. How could this be? Upon closer examination the cell noticed that the part of these molecules that spent all it's time in the bilayer were apolar! 'So that is how it works!' This, she could use. With a bit of poking and prodding the molecules were shaped into pumps and more complicated devices. 'I shall name them proteins! As prometheus gave fire to the humans allowing them all sorts of new possibilities these proteins allow me a similar increase in awesomeness!'



N.B. Is this sort of thing desired here?

This isn't particularly helpful for me because we are expected to have taken at least basic chemistry and understand about polarity before taking biology, so we started with atoms and worked our way through important molecular structures; in my class we're expected to have a pretty deep understanding of the composition and function of phospholipids and various types and functions of transport proteins.

Buuut I won't speak for Twid, as this sort of informal writing might be effective for his style of learning.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Twid, does your book come with the online stuff and the videos? I find them pretty helpful. I am getting the impression that your book has a different chapter layout than mine.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Regret, I do think it's pretty entertaining the way you anthropomorphize the molecules, though.

[Reginald Ret]

Regret, I do think it's pretty entertaining the way you anthropomorphize the molecules, though.

Thanks

I'll see if i can keep it up when i go deeper with it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Twid, have you seen the Crash Course videos? They're really fun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPKvHrD1eS4

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Twid, does your book come with the online stuff and the videos? I find them pretty helpful. I am getting the impression that your book has a different chapter layout than mine.

Yeah, there's a web component to the class. Our homework assignments are up there as are quizzes. It's possible that the layout is a different.  We're expected to understand the chemistry involved, but it's not expected that we;ve taken chemistry. The basic chemistry behind it gets covered in class. It can be a bit daunting at times though.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Twid, have you seen the Crash Course videos? They're really fun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPKvHrD1eS4

Ooh nice, thanks!

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Membranes.

Membranes are about 5 nanometer, that is about 50 atoms,  thick. They are made of certain lipid molecules.
These membrane lipid molecules consist of 2 parts, one part is polar. This part  likes to hang out with water because water is also polar and it is always nice to be around people you can really connect with, you know.
The other part of these lipids is not polar at all. In fact, it is so apolar that it is always excluded by water and it's polar friends. You would think this makes the apolar molecules sad, but they are totally unaware of being rejected. It almost seems as if they prefer their own kind as well but that is an illusion. This illusion is created because all the apolar molecules constantly get pushed out of all the polar groups they encounter untill they bump into another apolar molecule. Finally they have found someone who doesn't push them away. As long as there is this excluding pressure from polar molecules around them, they stick together. Not because they are connected but because they have nothing better to do.
All this has the nice effect of automatically creating a double layer of lipid molecules, with their apolar bits pushed together. Maybe you would think that this would just create lipid balls and that would be that. But what happens if more lipids get jammed into one of those balls? Soon it would lengthen into a bilayered sheet. Still not a bubble, right? Now imagine one lost little water molecule getting himself stuck in the middle of these lipids. Oh the horror! he is all alone now, no polar friends to keep him company. But wait! here come the lipids to the rescue! the lipids, seeing the suffering of the the poor innocent water molecule flip around so their polar heads are now offering much needed social contact to the water. A bubble is born.

A cell, having a membrane can now do some cool things.
It can now maintain a difference in concentration of all kinds of handy or annoying molecules. As long as those molecules are polar.
As you can imagine, this opens up many possibilities. If the cell wants to keep apolar molecules in it will need to make them polar first, otherwise they will just get stuck in the membrane with only the lipids for company.
Legend has it that one of the first cells realised it needed a way of changing the inner concentration of stuff, instead of just maintaining it. So it looked in its membrane and found some weird molecules there. 'These are not lipids!' she exclaimed, yet they can stay inside the lipid bilayer. How could this be? Upon closer examination the cell noticed that the part of these molecules that spent all it's time in the bilayer were apolar! 'So that is how it works!' This, she could use. With a bit of poking and prodding the molecules were shaped into pumps and more complicated devices. 'I shall name them proteins! As prometheus gave fire to the humans allowing them all sorts of new possibilities these proteins allow me a similar increase in awesomeness!'



N.B. Is this sort of thing desired here?

This isn't particularly helpful for me because we are expected to have taken at least basic chemistry and understand about polarity before taking biology, so we started with atoms and worked our way through important molecular structures; in my class we're expected to have a pretty deep understanding of the composition and function of phospholipids and various types and functions of transport proteins.

Buuut I won't speak for Twid, as this sort of informal writing might be effective for his style of learning.

I like teh style, especially the anthropomorphizing.

Actually my professor does it a bit too. He says this guy and these guys here, and what is this guy doing

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Twid, does your book come with the online stuff and the videos? I find them pretty helpful. I am getting the impression that your book has a different chapter layout than mine.

Yeah, there's a web component to the class. Our homework assignments are up there as are quizzes. It's possible that the layout is a different.  We're expected to understand the chemistry involved, but it's not expected that we;ve taken chemistry. The basic chemistry behind it gets covered in class. It can be a bit daunting at times though.

It sounds like they did photosynthesis before cell membranes, which made me wonder whether the chapters are in a different order; for us, membranes were chapter 7 and photosynthesis is chapter 10.

They wouldn't let me take the class until I took chemistry. Like, at all. I asked.

We don't use the web component too much, but I do kind of find the cheesy videos helpful, especially when I follow them up with the Crash Course videos.