The Biology Thread

[minuspace]

Regret:  I was reading the story and it primed the biology pump of understanding in my noodle.  There were two related points I wanted to remember.  When you guys say "apolar", is that the same as "dipole"?  Like polar has the strong electron scavenging bond, while the dipole bond is more the clumpy kind based on the "moments" gathered by molecular arrangement and the resultant bias of fields?  My confusion seems to stem from the characterization of lipids as being (also) polar.  Their function as cell membranes is more complicated than just the parts themselves would have lead me to believe.

apolar has no poles, it is electrically and magnetically inert. Throw it in a strong magnetic field and it is like, whatever man. I got my own thing going here. Think of plastics, oil, glass. lipids seem weird because they have an apolar bit and a polar bit, the polar bit can be dipolar or tripolar or some other configuration. The reason they can exist like this is because they are quite a lot bigger than regular polar molecules.
Imagine a stick with a knob on its end. the stick is apolar and the knob is polar, so if you get thousands of these sticks the knobs will interact with eachother. parts of each knob will reject the same parts on the surrounding knobs, but will attract the other parts (with the other polarity) of the knobs. like magnets they will fit together. The apolar sticks don't really care either way, but if two knobby bits are trying to get together then the sticks will just passively be pushed aside.eventually this will result in all the sticks being stuck together, roughly parallel to each other so the knobs can hug as much as they want.

I hope i have made it a bit more clear.

So, apolar molecules move and act together like you said, and polar bonds are instead "covalent"?

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Someone respond to this so I remember to read what Ferx and Regret said when I'm sober.

Twid,
Now knows better than to drink with housemate on weeknight, since it ends in a lot of youtube, and, strangely, Irish comedians I've never heard of by his suggestion (he's from Panama)

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Also, I totally forgot to do my laundry, but I bought soap for the shower tomorrow goddammit.

Twid,
Won't be stinky, can't speak for clothes

[Left]

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 should be an animated cartoon.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh hey, this thread!

This term we're mostly covering inheritance and phylogenics.

I'm so tired of plants. Already. I wish we were at least working with drosophila.

[Left]

Oh hey, this thread!

This term we're mostly covering inheritance and phylogenics.

I'm so tired of plants. Already. I wish we were at least working with drosophila.

...Sympathies, I only got one chapter of that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh hey, this thread!

This term we're mostly covering inheritance and phylogenics.

I'm so tired of plants. Already. I wish we were at least working with drosophila.

...Sympathies, I only got one chapter of that.

Oh, I love inheritance. I don't even mind phylogenics. That's why I'm a biology major.

But I do not give a single fuck about plants.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I start in a week. I picked up my bio text, which is basically just the second half of the previous one. Looks like we'll be starting of with genetics too.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

So it looks like this semester is going to be both hard, since it's 3/4ths science and 1/4 math (and a good test run to see how well I do as a full time science student), and also really fucking fun and interesting.

Aside from obviously, in Microbiology experimenting with bacteria and pathogens, in Gen bio two, we're going to have an 8 week long fruit fly breeding experiment to study mutant traits, perform microsurgery on their larvae, and separate DNA fragments.

Um. Fuck yeah.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So it looks like this semester is going to be both hard, since it's 3/4ths science and 1/4 math (and a good test run to see how well I do as a full time science student), and also really fucking fun and interesting.

Aside from obviously, in Microbiology experimenting with bacteria and pathogens, in Gen bio two, we're going to have an 8 week long fruit fly breeding experiment to study mutant traits, perform microsurgery on their larvae, and separate DNA fragments.

Um. Fuck yeah.

You bastard. You get the Drosophila lab module. We got the Brassica Rapa module. You know what's boring? Fast plants. That's what.



I wanted to do the fruit flies.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

So it looks like this semester is going to be both hard, since it's 3/4ths science and 1/4 math (and a good test run to see how well I do as a full time science student), and also really fucking fun and interesting.

Aside from obviously, in Microbiology experimenting with bacteria and pathogens, in Gen bio two, we're going to have an 8 week long fruit fly breeding experiment to study mutant traits, perform microsurgery on their larvae, and separate DNA fragments.

Um. Fuck yeah.

You bastard. You get the Drosophila lab module. We got the Brassica Rapa module. You know what's boring? Fast plants. That's what.



I wanted to do the fruit flies.

I'm chuffed nevertheless

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I'm actually pretty pleased because even though the Microbiology class won't transfer, Micro, Gen Bio II, and (I'm assuming, will find out Saturday) Biotech are entirely complementary and (I kinda want to punch myself for using this word) synergistic.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Also, nevertheless, let's both post our experiments/lab reports.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, nevertheless, let's both post our experiments/lab reports.

It's a deal!

My fast plants lab report is going to kind of suck because the bright green seedlings died. I mean, fuck this.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Also, nevertheless, let's both post our experiments/lab reports.

It's a deal!

My fast plants lab report is going to kind of suck because the bright green seedlings died. I mean, fuck this.

My semester started Tuesday plus storm.

I know 3/4ths of my syllabi 

You're already ahead of me.