Welcome to the Summer Assignment

Welcome to the AP Biology summer blog for 2013. I hope to get the first official post (that you will have to comment on) up the week of July 15. In the meantime, some things you can do:

1. Become a follower of the blog. There are two ways to do this on the right hand side. If you follow via email, Blogger to send you notifications of new posts. There is also the option to subscribe to an RSS feed if you use them.

2. Follow me on Twitter (@DrHMTHS). There is a button to the right to do this quickly. I will be posting on Twitter when new posts are up. If you do not have a Twitter account, it is probably a good idea to go ahead and get one; we will be using it in my class next year.

3. Check out the Podcast list to the right. All of these are excellent, and are a great way to keep up with current science topics, and they are very entertaining as well.

4. If you know of a time frame which you will be unable to comment due to vacation, follow this link to complete the form to let us know before you leave for vacation. We will make arrangements with you as far as making the missed weeks up. If you do not let us know ahead of time, the missed weeks will count as zeros.

Summer Assignment 7.13

Welcome to the first official post of the 2012 AP Biology Summer Blog. The rules are simple:

1. Check out the links I include in the post.
2. Make an intelligent comment on them.
3. Or respond in an intelligent way to someone else's comment.
4. Earn points!

Just a note, you don't need to read all of the links I post when there are multiple stories linked. You can always pick the ones that seem most interesting to you.

On to the links:

• What do Mothers Against Drunk Driving, America's Most Wanted, and Batman have in common?  Post-traumatic growth of course.
• Newsweek says the web is "driving us mad." This guy (and most of the Twitterverse and Blogosphere) say Newsweek has no idea what science is.
• Someday I hope to make it up to Manhattan for "Manhattanhenge," if only because the odds of bumping into Neil deGrasse Tyson would be pretty good.

Cellular respiration review

Follow this link to watch my review of cellular respiration. It may take a while to load because it is fairly long, but give it some time.

Or, you can watch it right here.

Cellular Respiration Overview

As I was looking over the work from today when I was out I saw this on the back sheet of one of the packets.

This outline is great, and would be a great thing for you all to know. I will elaborate on this a bit in class tomorrow, but this is a great basic overview.

iPad assignment (UPDATE: 10.19 (UPDATE 2 10.20))

This is your first iPad assignment of the year!

First, download and read these two files for the lab on Thursday.
Lab 10A - Blood Pressure
Lab 10B - Heart Rate

Then, go to this website and request access to the site. This is the class Wiki, and will be the place to go for course materials to download.

UPDATE: Please also email me from your iPad at my school address with the subject line "AP Bio." There does not need to be anything in the body of the email, this is just so that I will have your school address in my contacts list.

UPDATE 2: Comment from Esther: I can't seem to send an email from my ipad for some reason. This is a known problem, and the tech department is working on. For now, the web server (link) is working, so you can send your email through that.

Kidney animations

Ok, here is an attempt to get the kidney animations on here. Looks like the Flash player didn't embed correctly, at least on my MacBook. But you can still download the files and view them.

October Schedule (UPDATE)

Follow this link to view the schedule for October.

Please note that the schedule at the link has had some minor changes to it. Please refer to the hard copy distributed in class.

Animal Reproduction and Development Study Guide Answers

Here are the answers for the two chapter reviews that were given out yesterday in class. The test is still scheduled for tomorrow, even if we run on a delayed opening schedule. If you have questions, post them as a comment, and I will respond as quickly as I can. Enjoy the snow day!

Chapter 46
Interactive Questions
46.1 a. Reproduce quickly, do not need to find a mate, genetic stability (good for stable environments)
b. Genetic variability (good for changing environments)

46.2 a. courtship behaviors
b. chemical signals
c. environmental signals

46.3 a. vas deferens____l. oviduct
b. erectile tissue______m. eggs/ova
c. urethra______________n. corpus luteum
d. glans________________o. uterine wall
e. prepuce______________p. endometrium
f. scrotum______________q. cervix
g. testis_______________r. vagina
h. epididymis___________s. ovary
i. bulbourehtral gland
j. prostate gland
k. seminal vesicles

46.4 a. Oogenesis has long resting periods
b. Oogenesis creates only one mature gamete
c. Oogenesis is only active during certain periods of life

46.5 a. GnRH
b. FSH
c. LH
d. androgen
e. primary and secondary sexual characteristics
f. negative feedback loops

46.6 a. LH
b. FSH
c. Estrogen
d. Progesterone
e. follicular phase
f. ovulation
g. luteal phase
h. menstrual phase
i. proliferative phase
j. secretory phase

46.7 a. secreted by embryo, maintains corpus luteum secretion of estrogens and progesterone
b. secreted by corpus luteum, negative feedback to hypothalamus and pituitary
c. secreted by fetus and mother's pituitary, stimulates contractions

46.8 a. prevent fertilization - abstinence, condom, diaphragm
b. prevent implantation - IUD, RU-486
c. prevent release of gametes - sterilization, combination pills

Test Your Knowledge
Fill in the Blank
1. budding
2. protandrous
3. parthenogenesis
4. hermaphrodite
5. cloaca
6. estrous
7. progesterone
8. urethra
9. vasocongestion
10. menopause

Multiple Choice
1. e______11. c
2. d______12. a
3. a______13. e
4. c______14. d
5. e______15. b
6. c______16. b
7. e______17. b
8. a______18. d
9. b______19. a
10. b_____20. e

Chapter 47
Interactive Questions
47.1 a. Recognition between proteins on sperm head and receptors in vitelline layer of egg
b. Fast and slow blocks to polyspermy

47.2 a. morula
b. frog blastula
c. animal pole
d. blastocoel
e. vegetal pole

47.3 a. ectoderm
b. mesenchyme cells
c. endoderm
d. archenteron
e. blastopore
f. archenteron
g. ectoderm
h. mesoderm
i. endoderm
j. yolk plug

47.4 a. neural tube
b. neural crest
c. somite
d. archenteron
e. coelom
f. notochord

47.5 a. yolk sac - encloses yolk, develops blood vessels
b. amnion - provides aqueous environment for embryo
c. allantois - holds waste
d. chorion - gas echange

47.6 a. epiblast - three germ layers, amnion, mesoderm, placenta
b. hypoblast - yolk sac
c. trophoblast - chorion, fetal portion of placenta

47.7 sea urchin - unequal polar distribution of cytoplasmic determinants, determined by first horizontal division

47.8 developing limb would be a mirror image with digits on both sides

Test Your Knowledge
1. c_______11. b
2. c_______12. e
3. b_______13. a
4. e_______14. b
5. e_______15. e
6. c_______16. e
7. b_______17. a
8. a_______18. b
9. c_______19. d
10. c______20. d

Mid-Year Course Evaluation (Dr. H's class only)

Please take some time over break to complete the following course survey for Dr. H's class.

Click here to take survey

Please be honest; the survey is completely anonymous, and the more honest you are, the better able I will be to modify the course/teaching techniques to help you.

Thanks, and enjoy your break.

Quick Comment

Just a quick note that I will be out of town, with no internet access, from Friday morning till Sunday night/Monday morning. If you make a comment between those times, it may take a few days to show up. I will read them all when I get back.

Darwinism Test and PowerPoint

I was a bit disappointed by the level of surprise in class today about the test on Friday. I hand out the monthly syllabus for a reason: For you to know what is happening in class. I expect you to use the schedule, and not rely on me to tell you when things are happening. There should be no surprises when it comes to tests, quizzes, labs, or any other class activity.

I want you to use the syllabus for a few reasons. One, it makes it easier for me to plan. It should also make it easier for you to study, since you have a few week's notice of tests and quizzes. If you are absent from class, you can look at the schedule and see what we are going over that day. One of the most important reasons I do this is that this is what happens in a college course. You will get a syllabus at the beginning of the semester that lists all the tests. You will be expected to know when they are. The professor/instructor may not remind you that they are coming.

Please use the syllabus. There is one posted in the classroom, and I can get you another copy if you lost yours. There are two more quizzes on the syllabus for this month. Make sure you know when they are. I may not remind you in class about them.

Anyway, here is the complete PowerPoint for Chapter 22. I will be moderating comments till 10.30 tonight.

Chapter 16 review packet answers

Here are the answers to the answers to chapter 16 review packet. If you need more explanation for any of the answers, leave a comment and I will respond.

Interactive question 16.5
a. helicase.....................................................h. DNA polymerase
b. Single-strand binding potein.................i. RNA primer
c. DNA polymerase.....................................j. primase
d. leading strand.........................................k. replication fork
e. lagging strand......................................l. 3' end of parental strand
f. ligase..............................................m. 5' end of parental strand
g. Okazaki fragments

Multiple choice
1. c....................................12. d
2. a...................................13. e
3. b.................................. 14. a
4. a...................................15. d
5. b...................................16. e
6. a...................................17. c
7. b...................................18. d
8. e...................................19. e
9. e...................................20. c
10. a.................................21. a
11. e

Animations

Here are the links for the DNA replication and the transcription/translation animations. I had some problems getting the Flash movies to load using Firefox, but found that IE worked fine.

As a quick aside, please be careful when you use internet resources to study. Be sure that the information you are getting is from a reputable source. A student in block 1 today had some questions about the "5-inch cap" on mRNA, and what it meant that rRNA "forms a gibbet." The student stated that the information came from a website. Upon Googling, I found the site, and the entry on RNA types. I scanned a few of the other posts, and found that grammer is a bigger issue than getting facts wrong. However, the info about RNA is pretty bad.

There is a 5' (five prime) cap added to mRNA molecules. The problem may have come from misreading the prime symbol (') as the symbol for inches, as in I am 5'10" tall. However, the symbol for inch is ", not '. And if the cap were 5 inches long, assuming that each nucleotide is 3.4 Angstroms apart, there would be approximately 370,000,000 nucleotides in the cap. Seems a little much, cosidering the whole human genome is only 3,000,000,000 base pairs.

As far as the gibbet....I have no idea where that came from.

So please be midful of this when searching for help online.

Genetics problems review answers/explanation

Here are the answers and explanations for the genetics review problems from class today. There will be a few problems on the test. I will be online till around 10.45 or so tonight if you have any questions.

1. Colorblindness is a sex-linked, recessive trait. Remember that sex-linked traits are on the X chromosome, which means that men only have one copy of the gene. In this example, we are told that the man has colored vision, so his genotype must be X^CY. The woman also has colored vision, so she could be X^CX^C or X^CX^c. Since one of her sons is colorblind, she must be X^CX^c, since sons inherit their X chromosome from their mothers.

2. This is a relatively simple dihybrid cross. If we use B for brown eyes and b for blue eyes; and H for brown hair and h for blonde hair, the genotype of the man is BbHH, and the woman is bbhh. Doing the cross, their children have a 50% chance of being BbHh and a 50% chance of being bbHh. Answering the question posed on the sheet, there is 0 chance their children will have blue eyes and blonde hair.

3. This is an example of a dihybrid cross where one of the genes displays incomplete dominance - red and white flowers give pink. We are crossing two F₁ plants, so the phenotype of both parents is TtRr. For this type of dihybrid cross with complete dominance, we would normally expect the 9:3:3:1 ratio. However, with incomplete dominance there is a new phenotypic class, since the heterozygous individuals are distinct from the homozygous dominant individuals. The expected phenotypic ratios are then 3 tall, red-flowered; 6 tall, pink-flowered; 3 tall, white-flowered; 1 dwarf, red-flowered; 2 dwarf, pink-flowered; and 1 dwarf, white-flowered.

4. A dihybrid cross with a lethal allele. If an individual is homozygous recessive for the l allele, they will not survive, and are not counted in the phenotypic ratios for the answer. The parental genotypes are LlBb and Llbb. After throwing out the individuals with the lethal gene combination, the phenotypic ratio in the offspring is 1 normal-legged, brown; 1 normal-legged,white; 2 deformed-legged, brown; and 2 deformed-legged, white.

5. Gene linkage. You absolutely must know how to analyze these types of data, and tell the difference between parental and recombinant phenotypes. The data that are presented are from a testcross on the F₁ generation. The genotypes for this cross are CcShsh crossed with ccshsh (remember, a test cross is always performed with a homozygous recessive individual). The phenotypes of the parents are colored, full seeds and colorless, shrunken seeds.

If we assume that these genes are going to follow the Mendelian laws of inheritance, we predict that the offspring would have equal numbers of the four possible phenotypic classes: colored, full; colored, shrunken; colorless, full; and colorless, shrunken. HOWEVER, that is NOT what the data show. Two of the phenotypic classes, colored, full seeds and colorless, shrunken seeds are MUCH more common than the other two. These two common phenotypes are called the PARENTAL phenotypes, since they resemble the parents of the cross. The other two phenotypes, which are much less common, are called RECOMBINANT phenotypes, since these gene combinations do not exist in the parental generation.

To calculate the map distance, we need to calculate the recombination frequency, which is simply the percentage of offspring that show recombinant phenotypes. For this problem, the answer is (515 + 489) / 8368 = 12%. This means that the genes are 12 map units apart.

6. This is an example of epistasis - one gene is influencing the expression of a second gene at a second location. In this case, dogs that are homozygous recessive for the e gene will be yellow, regardless of what alleles are at the location that determines pigment color (B for black and b for chocolate). The phenotypes of the parents are BbEe. Doing the cross results in a 9 black to 3 chocolate to 4 yellow labs.

7.

...........7..........3...................15..................5..........
-----/-----------/----------/---------------------------/-------------/---
.....b..........d...........a...........................c.............e

8. This is a simple incomplete dominance cross. The heterozygous individuals have green flowers. A cross of two green flowers gives results of 1 blue, 2 green and 1 yellow.

9. The genotype of the woman must be ii, since that is the only possibility for type O blood. Her baby, with type A blood, must have at least one i allele from the mother. Therefore, the babies genotype must be I^Ai. The I^A allele must come from the father. The only man with an I^A allele to contribute is man #2.

10. Pedigree A is an autosomal recessive trait. Pedigree B is a sex-linked trait because many more males exhibit the trait than females (7 vs 2). Pedigree C is a dominant autosomal trait. To differentiate recessive and dominant traits, there are a few things to look for. First is that recessive traits tend to skip generations. Look at generations I and III in pedigree A. For a dominant trait, at least one parent must exhibit the trait in order for it to be passed on to the offspring.

11. I treated this example like a regular dihybrid cross, but in this case the dominant allele will change based on the sex of the individual. The two parental genotypes are BbXX and BbXY. For female offspring, there will be 3 with hair for every 1 bald; and for males there will be 1 with hair for every 3 bald.

Genetics test

The test on genetics will be on Thursday, Nov 20. It will cover chapters 14 and 15. I have included two large PowerPoint presentations below. Both cover much more than we went over in class, and probably more than will be on the test.





And please remember to bring a #2 pencil for the test.

Cell Division Test

If you can figure out why Dr. H had his son pose for this picture, you will receive 5 bonus points on the test Wednesday.


Post your answer as a comment. Be sure I know who you are from your user name.

Ms. Drust AP Biology Class

I am pushing back the cellular respiration test until Friday. I realized that some of the questions deal directly with the lab and I want to be sure that you guys have all the data for the lab and test. Please make sure to pass it on.

Chapter 9 review packet answers

To help you study for the respiration test on Thursday, here are the answers to the chapter 9 review packet handed out in class on Tuesday.

Interactive questions

9.1 C₆H₁₂O₆, 6 CO₂, energy (ATP + heat)
9.2 a. oxidized b. oxidizing agent c. reduced
9.3 a. oxygen b. glucose c. Some is stored as ATP and some is released as heat
9.4 a. electron acceptor or oxidizing agent b. NADH
9.5 a. glycolysis: glucose --> pyruvate b. Krebs cycle c. ETC and oxidative phosphorylation d. substate-level phosphorylation e. substrate-level phosphorylation f. oxidative phosphorylation The top two arrows show electrons carried by NADH to the ETC
9.6 a. 2 ATP b. 2 glyceraldehyde phosphate (not important for this class) c. 2 NAD+ d. 2 NADH e. 4 ATP f. 2 pyruvte
9.7 a. pyruvate (from glycolysis) b. CO₂ c. NADH d. CoA e. acetyl CoA f. oxaloacetate g. citrate h. CO₂ i. NADH j. CO₂ k. NADH l. ATP m. FADH₂ n. NADH
9.8 a. intermembrane space b. inner mitochondrial membrane c. mitochondrial matrix d. ETC e. NADH + NAD+ f. NAD+ g. H+ h. 2 H+ + 1/2 O₂ i. H₂O j. ATP synthase k. ADP + P_i l. ATP
9.9 a. -2 b. 4 c. Krebs cycle d. 32 or 34 e. 38 f. 2 g. 6 h. 2 i. 2 j. 2
9.10 Respiration yields up to 19 times more ATP than does fermentation. By oxidizing pyruvate to CO₂ and passing electrons from NADH through the ETC, respiration can produce a maximum of 38 ATP compared to the 2 net ATP that are produced by fermentation.

Test Your Knowledge
1. a 15. c
2. a 16. c
3. c 17. b
4. d 18. d
5. e 19. c
6. d 20. e
7. c 21. c
8. e 22. b
9. b 23. d
10. b 24. e
11. a 25. a
12. e 26. e
13. c 27. c
14. e 28. d

I am not overly concerned with the Structure your Knowledge questions. You have a cellular respiration overview chart that we filled out the first day of respiration that has all the important information on it.

Additional Lab Review

Hey guys,

I just wanted to remind you that the lab bench website is a great resource. I might look it over for the test if I was an AP Biology student.

Weekend events - not science related

If you are looking for something fun to do this weekend (and maybe earn a few brownie points from Dr. H) the 31st annual John Ragone road races will be held this Sunday in East Brunswick.

I am entered in the 5K race, which starts at 1 pm. If you come out early, you can cheer on my son in the kid's Pumpkin Dash at noon.

The course map can be found here.

Hope to see you there.