Bio 103, Week 7, Working Up From Atoms ...

I didn't realize we would be talking about chemistry in this class, but I guess to fully understand biology (or any other science) you need a basic understanding of chemistry. Even though it was unexpected, I really enjoyed learning about chemistry from a more theoretical perspective. When I was in high school we mostly just memorized formulas and solved problems, and I didn't realize what chemistry actually had to do with the big picture. Our class discussions helped me realize how chemistry and biology work together to create life.

Not having a "human" atom or an "alive" one really struck me. Before, I had thought carbon as being the "alive" atom. Carbon, however, does not make the compound "alive". It just happens to be the things that are/were alive, but it is in other stuff also. Before, I would have said that carbon was the key to "life", but now that I think about it, there cannot be any specific "life atom".

Diversity seems to be a strong factor in many of our class discussions. The idea to actually relate the word diversity with structures of molecules explaines that the word diversity can be used in many ways, contexts...etc.

The lab on thursday was a great. My partners and I found that when performing exercises our heart rates increased. As stated in our lab forum, one of the reasoning for this reult can be that when our heart beats were at rest our blood was flowing at a steady pace, when we did the exercises our heart pumped faster causing the blood to go through our body faster. We found that there is a correlation between one's heart a rate and the flow of one's blood. What we could not understand was why was our blood pressures lower after performing an excerise, rather higher????

Overall I enjoyed myself!!!!! YAY!!

Class this week was interesting because it made me think of molecules and atoms in relation to my life. The one thing that I found especially interesting was the when we discussed the 3-D shapes of atoms in relation to diversity. I had never really realized that two things could be made out of the same atoms, yet end up being completely different depending on the order of their assembly. It is intruiging to think that thephysical differences of two things are possibly the result of just one small difference in their biological assembly. This makes me wonder how much variation can their can actually be between different forms of life. 

This week's discussion really fueled interesting conversation in the class that made me fully realize the importance of "improbable assemblies" (on a molecular and minute level) that make up various organisms.

What really struck me this week as very significant was the realization of how even one atom or molecule less in an "assembly" can produce very very different things. One main example of this was in the example that was brough up in class about Carbon Monoxide versus Carbon Dioxide. One causes deadly harm to humans if inhaled and the other is what is produced when we exhale.... the fact that even the most smallest changes in atomic structure can cause such a drastic change is rather alarming.

In my head, for some reason, I often associated these two as completely different, but in fact when you simply look at the structures of the two bonds, I noticed how little difference they have...

This made me think further on the whole biodiversity/"Are humans special?" discussion that we were having last week. If in fact some organisms have similar genetic makeup (with very minute differences in smaller molecular structures) to each other (such as gorillas, chimps and orangutans vs. humans) and such close common ancestors, does this mean that we can discount them as not as "special" as humans?

I really enjoyed this week's discussion and lab. I guess I have a few questions/thoughts. On Monday, we said that living and nonliving assemblies are not distinguishable by "the identity of their atomic constituents" (in other words, everything is made up of the same things). I know that there's a difference in the number of types of elements that make up an organism (and in the design/"pattern," as we saw on Friday). But if it's all made of the same thing, doesn't that mean that at the most basic level, the "clumps" we see in, say, species, is not present at the most fundamental level?

Second, I really liked that on Friday, we talked about things using more scientific terms than we normally do. I would not have expected to enjoy that, but I think I liked it because when we used those terms, we then asked what the practical implications were. I think that's the main reason I was able to follow everything we were talking about.

Third, lab was kind of a lesson in experimental methods for me. First, we were convinced for a bit that I was a zombie (or, more realistically, had really low blood pressure) because I wasn't getting a read on the thumb pressure reader thing. We figured out after about 20 minutes that the problem was actually with the reader (it had been working on and off). As a result, we didn't get to do as many trials as we wanted to, and didn't get to try as many variables, either. We were really nervous putting our post together, because it seemed like we didn't have as much data (and thus, we assumed, not as much to say) as other groups. I didn't think, however, that the data we got with the faulty reader should have been thrown out, and my partners and I were able to get some interesting information from it (and a bigger lesson about experiments in general). We also were concerned that since my BPM didn't change while listening to rock music or watching a funny video (we hypothesized my BPM would go up), this data was no good, since it proved nothing. But for me (and, I think, my partners), it proved that it's difficult to get a really accurate result on this kind of experiment because of the pretense of an experimental setting. If I had been hanging out with my friends listening to music, the result probably would have been much different.

I believe that the idea of atoms making us a diverse is a good story.  The fact that we are all made up of the same components but in different ways makes sense.  Also, the way that the same molecule can have so many different structures and therefore make life so much more diverse is fascinating.  Just thinking about the different arrangements, combinations etc. is mind boggling.  We've only talked about hydro carbons so far-so it’s interesting to think about all of the other different types of molecules and their varieties of structures.  I do believe that diversity stemming from the simpler components to structures is a good story.

all living things are made up of the same constituents (atoms). this makes sense to me. all living things are made up of the same constituents, but are different because of the arrangement thereof. this makes even more sense to me.

this story simply harks back to our discussion of clustered diversity, no? no matter what scale we look at things (from the universe to atoms), there is diversity in clumps, arrangements, boundedness, etc.

and those clumps, arrangements, boundedness in turn account for diversity.

it just keeps going in circles.

so if it keeps going in circles, is there ever a limit to molecular diversity? to atomic arrangements?