blog 9 virtual epidemic

In your blog describe which combination of these factors can cause the worst deadly epidemic. Support your answer with data
Make a contact mind map for your disease spread lab
H>C ：0 ；C>S：5 ； S>D：10  is the worst combination.  322 deads and only 78 are healty, and it still spreading.

microbe zoo

What is a microbe?
List the FOUR MAJOR groups of microbes.
What is microbial ecology?
Now begin browsing the sites (go back to the main page). As you go, keep a log of what kinds of microbes you find and where you found them.
Record the Zoo Location and What kinds of microbes are there? Include a short description or interesting information.
Include some pictures

Microbes are single-cell organisms so tiny that millions can fit into the eye of a needle.  They are the oldest form of life on earth. Microbe fossils date back more than 3.5 billion years to a time when the Earth was covered with oceans that regularly reached the boiling point, hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the earth.  Without microbes, we couldn’t eat or breathe.

Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa.

Microbial ecology is the ecology of microorganisms: their relationship with one another and with their environment. It concerns the three major domains of life — Eukaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria — as well as viruses.

DirtLand-Root cellar-Glomus intraradix

Root fungi, also called mycorrhizal fungi, are symbiotic organsims which associate with the roots of nearly all plants. This is sorghum root infected with the Vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungus Glomus intraradix. The image shows hyphal growth (the thin hairs) and vesicles (little ovals) inside the host's root. Root fungi, also called mycorrhizal fungi, are symbiotic organsims which associate with the roots of nearly all plants.

Animal Pavilion-Habitat on Humanity-teeth

When you eat sugar, you are not only feeding yourself, but you are also feeding the millions of microbes that call your mouth home. These microbes grow and stick to your teeth, forming plaque which can cause cavities and tooth decay.

 

Snack Bar-Yeast:

Yeast are small fungi which are incredibly important in the food and beverage industries. Yeast ferement the sugars in fruits to make wine, the sugars in grains to make beers. When grown in the presence of oxygen, yeast give off the gas carbon dioxide which makes bread rise. Yeast can grow with oxygen, (aerobically) or without oxygen (anaerobically.) Because it can grow either aerobically or anaerobically, it is known as a "facultative aerobe."

Space Adventure- Frequent Flyer-Bacillus megaterium

 

This bacterium, like all species of Bacillus, forms spores, like the one shown here. These spores help the bacteria survive hostile conditions, such as heat and drying out. The genus Bacillus contains many related species of bacteria. Because of their spores, many species of Bacillus are found in the desert. This particular species is relatively big, as bacteria go, and hence the name "mega".

 

Water World-Pond-Diatom

The large, round object in the center of this view is a diatom. Diatoms are protists that grow a silica shell around themselves. When diatoms divide, each offspring takes half of the original shell with it, and grows another matching half to complement the inherited shell portion. Diatoms are frequently found in wet environments, such as ponds. They also grow on most soil. Diatoms grow on the surface layer of soil, where they can use sunlight to produce food via photosynthesis. This species of diatom is yellow-brown in color when viewed with visible light. There are two basic types of diatoms: elongate ones and round ones, like this microbe. Elongated diatoms can move themselves about; round diatoms cannot. There may be as many as 10,000 species of diatoms. Huge accumulations of fossilized diatoms make up diatomaceous earth, which is used in toothpaste and in filters.

Site2:

1)   Use arrows to identify the microbes in the pond. You only need to pick 5 microbes on the picture, write their common names or phylum (group)

2. Choose ONE of the microbes in the jar and list the following information about the organism
a) What is its size?
b) Where are they usually found in the pond?
c) Describe one feature that makes them interesting.

 

1.    Spirogyra, Daphnia, Stentor, Volvox, and Cypris.

2.    Name (genus): Cypris

      Size : 0.5 - 3 mm

Where to find them : Amongst aquatic vegetation and browsing the surface     layers of bottom mud

Notes : The body of an ostracod, including the head, is enclosed by a bean-shaped shell (the carapace). If seen at low power under the microscope, just the antennae and limbs appear out of the gap between the two halves of the shell as they move amongst vegetation and mud.

Some of the smaller rounded water fleas (e.g. Chydorus) may be confused for an ostracod, but the shell of a water flea is usually much more transparent.

The ostracods, although quite easy to recognise, are often hard to identify further, because externally they all look rather alike!

Classification :
Kingdom - Animalia, Phylum - Crustacea, Class - Ostracoda

HHMI Virtual Lab

* What kind of patient samples are used for the purpose of identifying possible pathogens?
* What does PCR do, how does it work, and why is it useful?
* How do you separate the desired DNA from all others?
* How does an automatic DNA sequencer work?
* Why is it possible to use a DNA sequence to identify bacteria? 


1. Fluid from Lymph Node, Stool Sample, Urine Sample, Blood Sample, Sputum Sample, and Stool Sample from a Child.


2. PCR which is polymerase chain reaction is a scientific technique in molecular biologyto amplify a single or a few copies of a piece of DNA across several orders of magnitude, generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence. It's an inexpensive technique that can make segments of DNA. PCR can target specifics parts of DNA. This is useful for analyzing DNA especially for evidence taken at a crime scene.


3. A desired sequence is isolated by using restriction enzymes. They are enzymes that cut DNA at specific nucleotide sequences. PCR envolves a mixture of lots of stuff, but essentially, you are using a cell called a competent cell to preform a transformation. The cut DNA is introduced into the cell which acts like a machine to copy that DNA over and over again. PCR means Polymerase Chain reaction. Polymerase is the enzyme reponsible for DNA replication.


4. Automated deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing reduces the volume of low-level radioactive waste generated on campus, while providing a suitable alternative to manual DNA sequencing. Traditional methods of manual DNA sequencing utilize radioactive isotopes to label the DNA. Automated DNA sequencing utilizes fluorescent tracers instead of radioisotopes to label the DNA, thereby eliminating or significantly reducing the use of radioactive materials in some research laboratories.


5. It is possible because each strain of bacteria have their own specialized DNA sequence.

The cell's highest rate of diffusion

What shape (radius, villi and dimples) and size allow a cell to have the highest rate of diffusion?
Radius: 1x
Villi: 20% of cell surface area.
Dimples: 80, 1% of cell surface area.
Cell Shape: 10:1. 

vaccination

All vaccinations work by presenting a foreign antigen to the immune system in order to evoke an immune response, but there are several ways to do this. The four main types that are currently in clinical use are as follows:

1. An inactivated vaccine consists of virus or bacteria which are grown in culture and then killed using a method such as heat or formaldehyde. Although the virus or bacteria particles are destroyed and cannot replicate, the virus capsid proteins or bacterial wall are intact enough to be recognized and remembered by the immune system and evoke a response. When manufactured correctly, the vaccine is not infectious, but improper inactivation can result in intact and infectious particles. Since the properly produced vaccine does not reproduce, booster shots are required periodically to reinforce the immune response.
2. In an attenuated vaccine, live virus or bacteria with very low virulence are administered. They will replicate, but locally or very slowly. Since they do reproduce and continue to present antigen to the immune system beyond the initial vaccination, boosters may be required less often. These vaccines may be produced by passaging, for example, adapting a virus into different host cell cultures, such as in animals, or at suboptimal temperatures, allowing selection of less virulent strains, or by mutagenesis or targeted deletions in genes required for virulence. There is a small risk of reversion to virulence, this risk is smaller in vaccines with deletions. Attenuated vaccines also cannot be used by immunocompromised individuals. Reversions of virulence were described for a few attenuated viruses of chickens (infectious bursal disease virus, avian infectious bronchitis virus, avian infectious laryngotracheitis virus [4], avian metapneumovirus [5])^[14]
3. Virus-like particle vaccines consist of viral protein(s) derived from the structural proteins of a virus. These proteins can self-assemble into particles that resemble the virus from which they were derived but lack viral nucleic acid, meaning that they are not infectious. Because of their highly repetitive, multivalent structure, virus-like particles are typically more immunogenic than subunit vaccines (described below). The human papillomavirus and Hepatitis B virus vaccines are two virus-like particle-based vaccines currently in clinical use.
4. A subunit vaccine presents an antigen to the immune system without introducing viral particles, whole or otherwise. One method of production involves isolation of a specific protein from a virus or bacterium (such as a bacterial toxin) and administering this by itself. A weakness of this technique is that isolated proteins may have a different three-dimensional structure than the protein in its normal context, and will induce antibodies that may not recognize the infectious organism. In addition, subunit vaccines often elicit weaker antibody responses than the other classes of vaccines.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination)