Cholesterol

Click here to read more about cholesterol and how it affects our body. What is the difference between "good" and "bad" cholesterol? What should someone do if they want to lower their cholesterol levels? How does a doctor know if you have high cholesterol?

Please share your thoughts!

Organic Compounds

Want to learn more about organic compounds? Click here for more information (scroll to the bottom for biology related facts). 


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Everyday Osmosis

Do you want to see an example of osmosis that you can recreate in your kitchen? How about an example of osmosis occurring in plants? Want to see the egg example again? An osmosis animation? Explain why the large molecules in the osmosis animation remain on the right side of the membrane. Please share your thoughts!

Test your cell knowledge!

How quickly can you identify the parts of an animal cell? The microscope? 

Post your times below! Can you beat me?

How do materials move across the cell membrane?

Do you want to know more about passive transport? Osmosis? Active transport?

What is a concentration gradient? A solute? How do they effect the rate of passive transport? Please respond!

Biology4Kids

Click here to view a helpful website about cells. Check out the cell structure and cell function tabs to review information we are covering in class, or click on any of the other tabs for interesting information relevant to biology. Be sure to read the information about passive and active transport as we will be discussing the cell membrane in class next week. Enjoy!

Is this information helpful? Did you read anything that you didn't know already? Please respond!

Current Events: First Place Winner of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Contest

Click here to read an article and view images from the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. The photo on the right won the compeition this year! It is an image of the anther of a thale cress plant.  Many of the images were taken with less than 60X magnification. How does this compare the magnification of the microscopes we use in lab? What picture is your favorite? What is a micrograph?


Want to see more pictures? Click here to view winning micrographs from 1977-2008!

Current Events: Three Win Nobel for Ribosome Research

Click here to read a short article from the NY Times about 3 chemists who won the Noble Prize for their research on ribosomes! From left, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University; and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Isreal. 

Extreme bacteria (not another reality show).

What is an obligate anaerobe? What does extremophile mean? Click here to read more about a unique kingdom of bacteria.  The picture at the right was taken at the Midway Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park. The yellow coloring is caused by a particular type of archaebacteria that is known to survive at extremely high temperatures like those produced from a geyser.

Current Events: Lysosomes - Nature's Garbage Disposals?

Click here for an article from the NY Times about lysosomes. What you think about this article?
What do lysosomes recycle? What is the difference between proteasomes and lysosomes?

Cells

Want to learn more about cells? Click here for more information about plant and animal cells.