Biology At Your Fingertips

Biological systems interact, and these systems and their interactions possess complex properties. These systems are an important staple in biology and are displayed in both Smarty Plants and The Fix which are the podcasts that I listened to and connected to this big idea. In smarty plants, the guys meet with a scientist who is doing experiments figuring out how plants are able to tell where water sources are and where the sunlight is coming from. The experiments test plants so called “knowledge” such as learning and having memory of where food is coming from and how it knows where to find water. These experiments ultimately showed that even though humans don’t understand plants intelligence, it has to do with complex properties and interactions with the environment to live and thrive. The Fix is all about changing the way drugs affect your body by creating an interaction between the body and the “high” that is found in illegal drugs. So finding that muscle relaxers and other legal medications can stop the way that your body interacts with bad drugs therefore it’s reprogramming the human body system which is one of the big biological systems in our world.

Living systems store, retrieve, transmit and respond to information essential to life processes. These life processes are opened up and spread out in the podcasts titled CRISPR and Match Made in Marrow. CRISPR really dives into information as its all about genetic editing, and of course genetics are all just information and storage that passes on through offspring which is how we get different hair color, eye color, height, etc. CRISPR is all about editing DNA in order to get the exact outcome, look, and possibly attributes that you’re trying to make when using CRISPR. All this stored information directly relates to the big idea of this section as its all about storing the information in databases, transmitting the data to create DNA and then make what you wanted to come out. In the match made in marrow podcast, the guys were interviewing a woman who had put in a request to donate bone marrow and after numerous tests they found a perfect match was a crazy small chance when looking at it from the person who needed the transplant. The way that this podcast relates to the big idea is that in order for the transplant to occur, is that each persons cells that store the information on its own DNA need to be tricked into believing the new marrow is their own, otherwise the cells will fight each other and shut down. So with this the almost perfect match must occur, plus the cells must be tricked into a 100% match that way the transplant occurs safely and the host survives. This all has to do with transmitting information between the old and new cells which hopefully the cells respond to positively and efficiently to keep the person healthy. So, in all information is used in many ways including gene editing and marrow transplants.

Biological systems utilize free energy and molecular building blocks to grow, to reproduce, and to maintain dynamic homeostasis. Two of the podcasts that I was listening two connected with this idea quite strongly, they were Primitive Streak and Funky Hand Jive. In the primitive streak podcast, we learn that scientists recently learned how to grow embryo outside of the body, specifically the human body. The people studying the embryo were actually able to govern the environment for a perfect space for the embryo to grow, and reach the 14 day rule limit. These people were governing the environment in order to maintain energy input for the embryo to live and grow positively to study embryo growth during a period where it previously had never been able to be seen. The energy needed during their primitive streak need to be perfect or else the embryo will die and the process would be over. This is shown in the big idea of energy where we see that organisms respond to changes in their external environments, also timing and coordination of specific events are necessary for the normal development of an organism, and these events are regulated by a variety of mechanisms. This is why when the embryo is growing in a lab and in a human body, it is important that the mock environment is mirroring the original environment for the embryo. In Funky Hand Jive, there are specific environments put into place for an experiment to occur which is about swapping bacteria and microbes between humans and seeing what amount of bacteria stays on each person over time. The experiment included a handshake between the two men with pre handshake bacteria in possession, post handshake bacteria, and post handshake bacteria over a period of time. This relates to energy as ecosystems are effected by complex biotic and abiotic interactions involving exchange of matter and free energy. The experiment clearly provided an example of this process where one person had their own plus the bacteria of the other person but the other person only had their own bacteria.

The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life. Two of the podcasts I had been listening to connected to this big idea much more than the others. These two were; Cell Mates, and Henrietta’s Tumor. Cell Mates definitely puts evolution into perspective where we start to realize that all living things started out as a singular cell and then boom, there was an entire world with hundreds of millions of cells in each living being. The way that this likely happened is that a freak accident occurred and all things became possible such as copying and placing DNA. Now in one place in our Earths history two little bacterium drifted towards eachother and they ended up bonding and merge… this was the freak accident I was writing about earlier. This one time is a .0001% chance thing that could happen if you’re catching my drift. But here’s where it gets even crazier, the cell that merged and got inside the other started dividing over and over and over and over and this process kept happening on and on and on. From this, the cells weren’t just bacteria or little unimportant cells but rather they were mitochondria which are the powerhouse of the cells. This is what powers life and lets life grow with storage of genes and growing. Taking this from one single merger billions of years ago, we get this big world where the same process is occurring and is expanding. This is basically our tree of life. The way that we know this is how we came about, is if we look at our cells, we can see these cells that are the same as those mitochondria from the beginning. The second podcast that I was listening to, was called Henriettas tumor. Henriettas tumor talks about this woman who died 50+ years ago but pieces of her still live on today. This may not make sense but I will explain. Henrietta died of cervical cancer, after she died a doctor harvested pieces of her tumors. This harvesting allowed for research since experimenting on live, thinking, breathing humans is in humane. This is why the tumor was harvested. But here’s what’s crazy, if the tumor was split up it would continue to grow and “live” with Henriettas original DNA. Similar to cloning rat’s and sheep, this process allowed for scientists to jumpstart the process of evolution all over again with taking little pieces of the tumor and it grows with all the same DNA, which is the same as the Big Bang just like in Cell mates. The little singular cells merged and then started splitting up and growing over and over. This is Evolution.

Recently I have been listening to podcasts and trying to understand life on a deeper level. While I was doing this I happened to make some connections between the podcasts and decided to see what the Big Ideas of biology are and sure enough they all fit into their own categories. Over my next few blog post’s I will explain these connections and help you all to understand them the way I do.