Meiosis

Today (and Thursday for A block and Friday for D block) we talked about Meiosis and how it compares to Mitosis. Students took notes and the worked with a partner to complete a short packet of questions.
For more practice, try the Meiosis Tutorial from the Biology Project. See the diagram below for a comparison between mitosis & meiosis. You can click on the picture to make it larger.

Tumor Secrets Written in Blood

By Rachel Zelkowitz

ScienceNOW Daily News
17 November 2008

Doctors may soon be able to use blood tests rather than invasive biopsies to figure out what type of brain tumors their patients have. The findings, which come thanks to new insights about how tumor cells communicate with their environment, may also bring physicians closer to the goal of more personalized medicine. To read the whole article click here.

Thanks to Michelle for finding this article about cancer & blood.

Cancer & The Cell Cycle

What is cancer and how is it formed is what we addressed today (and what we'll do tomorrow in C and D blocks).

You can also never escape cellular respiration. The picture below talks about the relationship between cancerous cells, glycolysis and treatment. You can click on the picture to make it larger.

If you're interested in learning more about cancer check out The Nation Cancer Institute's Website.

More Mitosis & Microscopes

Today C block had the chance to work with microscopes and identify the stages of mitosis in both onion root tips and whitefish blastula.

Below is a video of mitosis in action.

Mitosis & Microscopes

Over the next few days we will be working with microscopes to look at the stages of mitosis in onion root tip and whitefish cells. For more information on mitosis look in the "Confused? See if any of these help" sidebar.

Starting Unit 2

Today we start the last week of fall term! We're starting unit 2 with Chapter 8: The Cellular Basis of Reproduction & Inheritance.

The plan for today is: warm up with some true false, take some notes, watch a video clip, take a few more notes and play the cell cycle game.

Below is the video clip we watched on binary fission:

Enrichment:
If you're looking to take a study break from humanities and languages, check this out:
Read the human genome project page with FAQ’s on chromosomes.
At the bottom of the page click on the Chromosome Number of Different Species Web site choose three species and find their diploid number of chromosomes. Remember: a human’s diploid number is 46 chromosomes.