Mitosis

Hello class ;)

Have you ever heard “Mitosis”?
Every cell gets divided and become two identical cells called mitosis. Mitosis is important activity for cell growth and development. Nucleus divided in half in mitosis and two daughter cells are identical to each other.

This is a process of mitosis.

From one cell, two new cells are made.

We used microscopes to observe the processes of each a plant cell and an animal cell.
The purpose of this experiment is Understand the mechanisms of Mitosis.

1.      Mitosis in plant

In plant cells, cytokinesis occurs as a number of small vesicles fuse at the metaphase plate to form the cell plate. Over time, the cell plate reaches across the cell and joins with the plasma membrane.

  

Mitosis in Animal cell

In animal cells, cytokinesis occurs when a ring of actin and myosin filaments constricts the plasma membrane at the equator. Eventually, the parent cell is divided into two cells.

  

While mitosis remains the same in plants and animals, the process contains similarities and differences between these two types of eukaryotic cells.

Photosynthesis

Hello class :)


What do you think about photosynthesis?

As we know, photosynthesis is one of the most important activities for plants and photosynthetic organisms. 
It is a system of using photon, CO2 and H2O are transformed to C6H12O6 and O2 by photosynthesis. Their products are essential for animals and inspirational activities. 

The purpose of this experiment is to understand photosynthesis using plant’s leaves with following experiments: determining which colored pigment are most effective for photosynthesis, separation and identification of plant pigment, and determining the absorption spectrum for leaf pigments.


Let me explain about first one of some experiments for it.

In our group, we used 1000mL beaker where 300mL water were inside, placed 200mL of 80% ethyl alcohol with 400mL beaker. Make sure do not place the ethyl beaker directly on the hot plate. Used forceps, dropped leaves into boiling alcohol solution and wait until they got white.  Removed them from the beaker and rinsed with water well. Waited for 5 minutes after they were soaked with I2KI solution.

Color	Pigment	Starch Present (predicted)	Starch Present (Actual results)
Green	○	+	+
Purple	○	+	+
Pink	○	+	No result
White	○	-	-
Other (Black)	○	+	+

According to the result, since dark green area in a leaf contained most large amount of starch, those areas were most common for photosynthesis. On the other hand, light green and white pigments contained no starch, which means no photosynthesis occurred in those areas.

Enzyme

Hello, class!

This week, I got an experiment about enzyme.

Enzymes are essential catalysts, which help to occur chemical reaction rapidly in our body.   Depends on the environmental conditions (PH and temperature) and activators will change their shape and alter its rate of activity.


The purpose of this experiment is to understand how does the enzyme work following experiments: investigating catechol oxidizes activity, the inhibition of enzyme activity, and the influence of factors (concentration, pH, and temperature) on the activity of the enzyme.


In our group, we were using 7 named test tubes, I put each 5mL of pH (4,5,6,6.8,7,8,9) buffer separately for each test tube. Then 1.5mL amylase was put into the test tubes by clean pipette and mixed them well. A drop of I2KI was put into the test plate and each test tube was recorded the time independently. Just before recording the time, 2.5mL of 1% starch solution was put into a test tube. Those procedure was rotated every test rube.

 It is very clear starch breakdown is most efficient at pH7 and gradually decrease as far from pH7. This is because Amylase is usually in the human mouth and exists with water which pH is 7.

Hello!

Hello, class :)
This is Chihiro Matsukawa.

How many of your guys have interests in biology? Or what do you think about biology? Difficult? hard? or no interests?

I am studying about biology at KCC now. Now my major is Liberal Arts. But I am going to switch it to Animal Science at UHM. My goal is to be the assistant of a vet.
I would like to show you guys the experiment which I do in the biology 171 L class each week. Hope you guys will enjoy my blog!


These picture is from last lab. I used microscope to observe a part of Elodea cell.
The top is in distilled water.                
The bottom is Elodea cells in 0.9 NaCl solution.

 Through this experiment, I leaned about osmosis. The movement of water down the concentration gradient.  Placed in distilled water, water moved in the cells and increased the turgor pressure in plants. Placed in salt water, water moved out the cells and pulled the membrane away from cell walls. This resulted in plasmolysis.