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Mealworm Behavior Lab

Mealworm Behavior  Introduction: Animals live in different environments but if new conditions arise, they will react.  Some animals will stick to their original habitat and react by not doing anything at all, but others will adapt.  Temporary variables can also be introduced to an environment, and some animals will react, while others will not react at all.  The goal of this experiment is to see which variables the mealworms will respond to with a significant migration, from light vs. dark, to the presence of food.  Our hypothesis is that they will react and often choose one side over the other instead of being partial to both. Hypothesis for  experiments 1,2,3,5,6 (not supposed to do 4): 1st experiment - mealworms will constantly be moving around the container and not choose a particular spot to remain in. 2nd experiment -  Mealworms will orient themselves related to the brightness of the background (meaning that they will choose one over the other). 3rd experiment -  Mealwo
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Review of Phylogeny EC

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Review/Discuss Phylogeny What did I learn?: Through this activity I learned a lot more about phylogeny and the cladograms. For example, it is important to know the relationship of the lines and how they represent the amount of time that separates each species. This is important to know because it makes reading the cladogram much easier and we get to compare common ancestors and which species are related to each other. Through this activity I learned a lot more about phylogeny vocabulary such as the root, branches, and what each branch separation represents. It was also interesting to see how to tell different sequences apart and this is important because it helps us learn about how related two different species are. I also learned about SNP and Indels which are important to understanding mutations in DNA and how different sequences are made. Overall, I feel a lot better about phylogeny and learning about evolution now that I know the basics of cladograms. Answers to Worksheet
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A Chinese Fossil Investigation

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A Chinese Fossil Investigation Hypothesis: I predict that the fossil would go at the junction that branches off into crocodilians and birds. This is because the image contains a vertebrae, but no fur, and we already know that reptiles and birds share a common ancestor. The fossil should be a tetrapod Fossil Cladogram from Lab Manual Information from Gene 1: Information from Gene 2: Information from Gene 3: Information from Gene 4: Analysis and Conclusions: Basically, all four genes are on the same organism. Use the images above to determine where the organism falls on the cladogram at the top of this doc. The organism is related to crocodiles, birds, and insects, but we know it is a tetrapod from gene 3.
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Bellarmine Lunar New Year Celebration 2018

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Bellarmine Lunar New Year Celebration 2018 This year I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Lunar New Year Celebration at Bellarmine on March 3, 2018. Being an Asian-American I found this event really special and exciting. It was fun to see other people that share the same culture as me come together to celebrate. This was my first Lunar New Year Celebration at Bell and it did not disappoint. There was good food, informative presentations/slideshows, and a lot of fun, kind people. The night begun with a dragon dance and I have not seen one since I was very young so it was fun to see the dancers perform. We then were able to get food at the buffet line and eat dinner with other community members that celebrate this holiday. After we finished eating there were games such as the chopstick challenge and CNY Pop Quiz. These were fun to watch as we got to see our own biology teacher Mr. Wong participate in the festivities. The night ended with a special dancing performance fr
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Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

Modeling Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium Introduction: The purpose of this experiment was to determine how certain factors effect allele frequencies in a population. The experiment was based on the principles of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and factors that can drive a population out of this equilibrium. We used Microsoft Excel sheets to create a mathematical model to simulate a population and test the effects of certain factors on allele frequencies. My key findings were that differing population sizes tend to cause greater changes in allele frequencies in a small population than in a large population over one or several generations. I also found that selection against homozygous recessive alleles decreased the frequency of this allele while increasing the frequency of the other allele for the gene in question over one or many generations. This is important because it demonstrates exactly how certain factors affect allele frequencies and demonstrate that certain factors can cause a ch
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pGLO Lab Report

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pGLO Lab Our experiments within the test tubes LB/AMP and LB/AMP/ARA Petri dishes, pGLO+ Our colonies of E.Coli Our dishes with the UV Light Our dishes without the UV light Conclusions / Results: This experiment turned out well because we were able to produce hundreds of E.Coli colonies in our pGLO+ LB/AMP/ARA dish. We learned about the production of DNA and how we can combine this bacteria, in this case E.Coli, with the GFP or green fluorescent protein. By doing this, we are able to see how quickly the E.Coli reproduces under certain circumstances. We used ampicillin (AMP) to kill the bacteria in the dishes without Arabinose (ARA). However, our dish with lysogeny broth (LB) in presence with arabinose, creates beta lactamase which is a resist protein to ampicillin. This also results in the expression of the GFP protein, giving the E.Coli its fluorescent glow in the UV light.
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Corn Genetics Lab

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Corn Genetics Lab Conclusion / Results: At the end of this experiment we learned a lot more about chi-square analysis and the dominant and recessive genes of corn. By being able to count the number of yellow, purple, shrunken, and smooth corn, we were able to conclude the ratio of genotypic ratio of 9:3:3:1. By using the data gathered from our experiment and the chi-square values, were able to predict the parents of the corn. Here, we believed that the parents were black eyed and were Bb x Bb. We were also able to predict how the corn came to be by determining what kind of cross it was. We believed that the ear of corn was produced by a dihybrid cross (PpSs x PpSs) that involved two pairs of heterozygous genes. In the end, our predictions were correct because we were able to determine the genes of the corn and their parents. This is important to us because we can use these genetics to figure out human ancestry and genetics. Genetics is a new, unique, and always c
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