notes-of-an-insomniac

[notes-of-an-insomniac]

February 4, 2019

I work as a Zoology Lab TA at my campus, and have learned a valuable lesson. Never procrastinate grading until the night before! I’ve literally spent the last 3 hours grading papers and inputting them into my grade sheet 😩

SEND HELP!

[notes-of-an-insomniac]

January 26, 2019

Don’t really have notes to post, but here are some cool pictures/videos of C. elegans from my molecular biology lab 🔬

[notes-of-an-insomniac]

January 23, 2019

Today was a long day since I had my first molecular biology lab 🔬

Evolution class today was spent discussing the history of scientific thought, starting with the Ancient Greeks.

In molecular biology, we discussed the mechanisms of RNA based gene suppression. My notes show one pathway method for RNAi inducing.

Fun Fact: The worm you see is C. elegans, a microscopic roundworm. C. elegans is seen as a model organism for research since it is small, has a short lifespan, is easy to cultivate, has a small amount of cells, and small genome. Another model organism is Drosophila, or the common fruit fly.

[notes-of-an-insomniac]

January 18, 2019

Today was a pretty easy day ☺️

I had my first real molecular biology lecture, and we spent it discussing the regulation of gene expression. You know, the process of going from DNA to some end product. In this case it was DNA to Proteins.

We also discussed our future lab project where we will be selectively turning off genes in C. elegans, a type of roundworm, to observe the effects on its phenotypes.

Fun Fact: During the human genome project, scientists were looking for a way to selectively turn off different genes so that they may observe the phenotypes it controls. Turns out nature had already created a way. This process is called RNAi, or RNA interference. It was discovered by accident when trying to selectively breed for flowers with darker pigment. RNAi is like a cop, keeping watch in a cell. When it notices RNA that’s off, like viral RNA, or different from the normal RNA, it will destroy it, and anything similar to it. When the scientists were trying to code for darker pigment, they accidentally selected a gene sequence that was targeted by RNAi. This caused RNAi to destroy any RNA with that sequence, leading to a pure white flower. Now this technology is being further researched to treat numerous diseases like macular degeneration, where one of the causes is that there are too many blood vessels being coded for, and clouding the eye, disrupting vision. Their hope is that with further research, we can destroy any disease sequence, like HIV and cancer.

[notes-of-an-insomniac]

January 17, 2019

Wasn’t a productive day for me 😞

I woke up with a headache so I wasn’t able to get much work done.

Today was Biochem review for the MCAT, so I studied that for about 2 hours.

I was also able to start my lecture notes for my physical evidence techniques class.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better ✌️

Fun Fact: L-amino acids, which have their amino groups drawn on the left side in a Fischer projection, are the only amino acids found in eukaryotic proteins. However there are D-amino acids, which are the opposite, produced by bacteria 🦠

[notes-of-an-insomniac]

January 16, 2019

The semester finally started so here’s my first post ✨

I’m Jaqueline, a senior with a biomedical science major and forensic science minor 👩‍🔬

I spent my time after class rewriting my notes for Evolutionary Biology and Molecular Biology 🧬

I also took the time to plan out my MCAT study schedule using @emmastudies weekly planner 📖

Fun fact : Did you know that the Oilseed rape plant produces a pesticide that when consumed by a caterpillar causes them to vomit up not only their stomach contents, but their entire stomachs 🐛