Genetic Diversity

+ Genetic Diversity- caused by the crossing over process in Prophase in meiosis. This is when there is a variety in the traits and how the offspring looks and acts.

+ A punnet square helps you see the variety in the genetic diversity.

+ This relates to the Reebop project because the offspring is VERY different from the parents. Although dots are dominant and your mom might have them, you might be "dotless".

PICTURE EXAMPLE LINK:
http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c387/Guitartists/bluesplash.jpg

Dear Past Jenni,

To help you learn about reproduction follow these pointers.

-- Punnett Squares; All the lower case letters are recessive and the capital letters are dominant. IF the combination is Yy, then it is a dominant trait.

-- Dihybrid Crossing; Dihybrid crossing is just a double punnett square. You have to do a combination of top row letters then side row letters.

-- Selective Breeding; Selective breeding is when you want certain traits from the parents to appear in the off-spring.

-- Incomplete; This is when two traits mix together to create a new species. A helpful example is flower colors.

Red + White= Pink

-- Co-Dominance; An example of co-dominance is camouflage or stripes. This is when there are two dominant traits present.

Two help you understand the last two terms, make a punnett square and try mentally breeding them. What happens if you breed dominant blue eyes with dominant Green eyes?

CO-DOMINANT

Hope these tips helped you out,

Jenni From the Future

January 29, 2010

Jenni~

Since you have been having a bit of trouble about the differences between mitosis and meiosis, I'm here to talk to you about it.

The first major difference is where these processes take place. Mitosis takes place in cells that have a nucleus(cheek cell) while meiosis takes place in all the sex cells (sperm, egg cells). Next, mitosis only produces two daughter cells while meiosis produces four daughter cells. This happens because first, mitosis happens(two daughter cells) and then the cell doubles (four daughter cells). The difference in daughter cells is called diploid(2) and haploid(4).

One experiment you could do that might help you is look at this simulation. It shows the differences and similarities step-by-step in this process. Here is the attached link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/miracle/divide.html (you have to click on the button on the right). This really helped me understand everything that was happening too.
Hope this helped,
Jenni from the Future

Week Fifteen of Blogging

This week we started to learn about meiosis. This is when organisms sexually reproduce. It is kind of like mitosis because they have the same phases. They only difference is the cell goes through twice the phase.
Mitosis: nucleus division, two daughter cells
Meiosis: sex cell division, four daughter cells
Similarities: cell division, DNA replication
We did an online simulkation to help us learn about meiosis and looked up some words we don't understand.

Week Fourteen

Cell Cycle

Key Points of the Week:

+ Depending on the cell size, it might reproduce cells a lot or very few times.

+ Interphase and Mitosis are both part of the cell life cycle

G= growing phases or checkpoints

Mitosis Requirements:

-- big enough

-- right enviorment

-- chromosomes must be lined up

Vocabulary:

+ centreols= Creates spindle fibers

+ chromatin= unraveled DNA

+ chromatid= chromosome in pairs

Week Thirteen (of Blogging)

Reproduction Unit
Onion Root Tip Experiment: Preperation
Why do cells reproduce?
-- repair
-- replace dead cells
-- we are growing
What do we expect to see of REPRODUCTION?
-- larger cells
-- more DNA clumps --> chromosone
-- bigger nuclei
-- more organelles
-- splitting cells
Onion Root Tip Experiment: What Happened
-- When we looked under the microscope, we saw many different cells.
+ about to split

+ lots of DNA strands
+ no nucleus ???
+ big nucleus
MITOSIS: When the eukaryotic cell seperates the chromosone and DNA intoo two identical sets.
Phases:
1. Interphase
2. Prophase
3. Prometaphase
4. Metaphase
5. Anaphase
6. Telaphase
7. Cytokinesis

Week Twelve

This week was a bit short. We had a shortened period and started our project in class. On Monday, we saw a video on how small we are compared to the universe. This represented how everything is part of something bigger and DNA is just a small section of a human.
atoms->molecules->a/t/g/c->base pair->codon->gene->strand->double helix->chromosome
We then wrote a cell analogy. Mine was to how a cell was/is like a household.
A cell is like a household because the parts function the same and have the same purposes. The kids who live there are like the ribosomes because they make everything work.The walls are like the cell membrane because it protects the house and is like a skeleton. The parents are like the nucleus because they control everything. The radio acts like mitochondria because it gives us energy. It also helps us keep moving. The love is just like cytoplasm because it holds everything in place. The dog acts like the Golgi apparatus because he sends (chases) everything out of the house that doesn't belong.
The rest of the week we worked on our project, read from the book, and went to the assembly.