holidays. continued?

about one week ago, january 19th to be exact, i had a dentist appointment. fun stuff. for some reason i always get to be the trial run for the new girl, i know i know, it's always a girl never a guy. but anyways, i always get the new girl so my routine appointments always take forever! and she tends to usually stab me with the pointy tools, squirt me with the water thingy, and cause my gums to bleed by attacking them with floss. it's not that my gums are just weak and unused to flossing, i do floss my teeth like a good little girl, but i don't use the force that the new girls always use. my poor gums. but anyways you're all, who am i kidding i doubt more than 5 people read this, probably wondering why is this post titled holidays? don't worry, i'm getting there.



as i walk into my dentist office on january 19th i see pink and red everywhere. and hearts and balloons. and twirly things hanging from the ceiling. one of those banners where all the letters are connected reads happy valentine's day! it's january 19th. basically a month away, and my dentist is already celebrating. they even gave us wonderfully sugar coated cookies as we walked out the door. shaped in a heart of course with a heart shape in the frosting as well. i don't know how most people view valentine's day, but to me it's not really worth a whole month of preperation. sure you get all the warm fuzzies as you spend your day with those closest to you all that jazz, but really? a whole month ahead of time? kinda makes it seem like february 14th is going to be the best day of the year. maybe it is to some.

after working in retail over the holiday season i have come to this conclusion: america over celebrates the holidays. as soon as halloween ended we were preparing for thanksgiving and as soon as thanksgiving ended up came the christmas trees. is our world really that bad that we need to look so far ahead to find something worth celebrating? i sure hope not. celebrate the small stuff, don't take it forgranted.

microbes...!

for my biology class we are reading non fiction books and then book reporting on them. yes, i know, ugh. science-y non fiction? sounds like a bore fest to me. only it's not! i am reading Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease. it's fascinating, for the most part, and it's certainly not the bore fest that i thought it would be. here is an excerpt from my book report...

"Chapter five talks about microbes, more specifically host manipulating microbes! The nasty human affecting microbe, the Guinea worm is one crafty little guy. You’re only at risk if you spend a lot of time with contaminated water so we should all be good, but if you get one it lives inside you and grows to about, oh, three feet long. Then its actions make you think that it’s decided that you’re no longer a good enough host and wants to come out. It does this by giving you painful blisters that burn with a fiery sensation so you automatically think, okay let’s just submerge my arm in some nice cool water. DON’T DO IT!! By submerging you arm in water the little Guniea worm let’s all of its little babies out into you. So now instead of having just one wormy living inside you, you have many, many, many. The only good way, that’s been found, of getting them out is wrapping them around something like a toothpick and slowly pulling them out bit by bit. Unfortunately this usually takes more than one day. Just one more host manipulator microbe example is the Dicrocelium Dentriticum. Basically, it’s a parasite that lives in sheep, but the thing is that it uses ants as a Trojan horse to get into the sheep. These little guys mess with the brains of the ants making them suicidal; once affected the ants go hang out on the ends of the blades of grass just hoping to be eaten by a sheep."

there's also one more type of microbe mentioned in the book that i didn't put in my book report and it's the Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga. because no one in their right mind knows what that is, i will call it the parasitic wasp that messes with the mind of Plesiometa Argyra, a spider. this spider is just a minding it's own business weaving its orb shaped webs all over the places in hopes of catching the little bug that blindly walks into in and then becomes lunch. to rain on this nice little parade, out of nowhere comes the parasitic wasp and he/she stings the spider. okay it's a she, because when she stings the poor little spider she deposits her eggs in it. after a short stint of being paralyzed by the sting from the evil wasp, spider wakes back up and goes about his/her business not knowing that his/her days are numbered. all the little wasp eggs living in the spider soon hatch into little wasp larva, and they're hungry. so what do they do? they suck the blood of the spider but for some reason the spider can't feel it so it just keeps on spinning webs. once this gets boring for the larva and they decide it's time to cocoon they inject some chemicals into the head of the spider. so now the spider is all drugged up and can only remember how to do steps on and two of its web making. after repeating steps one and two about fourty times, and this usually happens at midnight, the spider just stops. no more movement from mr. spider. the larva then kill motionless mr. spider and use the product of repeating steps one and two fourty times to have a nice place to hang it cocoon from. give it a week or two and you now have some more wasps. nasty little guys aren't they.

so, where you going to go to school?

i dread this question. unfortunately for me, it seems to be the staple now when i see people, mainly adults, that i haven't seen in a while. most of them have forgotten my age and seem to think that i'm going off to the wonderful world of college next year. sorry people, i still have one more year of high school to go. hopefully i'll get something figured out before next year is up.

i kinda think i know where i want to go to school. but then i think to myself, how can i pick a school when i'm not sure what i want to do? i really can't. so right now the tentative ISU pick is just something i came up with, with basically no good reason to back it up. maybe i'll decided that i wanna go out of state. but probably not because out of state costs are horrible.

i have recently started to just throw out random majors when i'm asked what i want to do. it'll be a while before i see these people again and i hightly doubt they'll even remember what i told them last time. so then if i ever decide on what i'm actually going to major in i can tell them that one for real. recently i have been telling people that i'm planning on majoring in big smart sounding things like biochemistry. or bio medical engineering. or just plain medicine. or chemical engineering. or micro biology. seems like i really like biology? meh, i don't know.

the outside world

the outside world is very cold. and snow covered. well at least right now it's snow covered. but that's not what i'm meaning when i say the outside world. by outside world i mean the world outside our our little sheltered life that we like to call high school. we live in a box. really, we do. a cardboard box, just kidding, it's actually a brick box. my box has a name, it's kennedy high school.

let's compare my box to um, i don't know, something that has many little boxes connected together. because i have other little boxes that i live in outside of my main brick covered box. this next box is a metal box. it's where i work. i don't live in this box very often. though i tend to enjoy it when i do, i actually like my job no matter how much i complain about it. i like the people i work with. we all like our metal box. it has a name too, old navy. then there are random other boxes that i visit from time to time.

so now that i've spent some time comparing my life to boxes i kinda feel like explaining why. here is why, we are extremely sheltered people. and by extremely sheltered i mean EXTREMELY SHELTERED. seriously, my idea of the outside world is anything outside my box. i think. okay, i'm pretty sure. i live in a world surrounded by these nice four walls. i rarely have to leave my world of boxes. a traumatizing story would fit nicely here but i don't have any.

i just wonder if my world of boxes is going to come with me when i move away and go to the wonderful world of college. i'm guessing that it probably will, and my green and gold brick colored box will probably change colors to show that of the school i'm now going to. //i still do not know where i'm going to college. i do not know when i will be deciding this// but i'm guessing that my box won't be as, i don't know, boxey? my new box probably won't be the sturdiest, it is closer to the outside world so there's a good chance that the cardboard won't be as thick. or maybe it'll be missing chunks in the sides. i don't know.

now that i have you all thinking i live in a carboard box i should probably end this post.

PDA

stop! seriously, just stop. the whole world does not need to see you make out. did you forget that you are in public, in school to be more specific? sure you like each other but really, i don't think you'll die if you go one whole day without making out in the school. you should really try it. it would be greatly appreciated. i don't care what you do at home, just please don't do it at school.

we all make fun of you in our classes. think of things to do to either make you stop or move away from our classroom so we don't have to see you every day. i really don't see why the teachers don't do anything about this. they complain about it right along with the students, yet they do nothing to try to put a stop to it.

i think we should all be able to have those little squirt bottles and a be able to shoot water at anyone we see making out. that would definitley brighten my day. too bad people would abuse this and just squirt whomever they wanted to.

it's not like this is the only time you are going to see each other, i'm sure you spend ample time together outside of school. so why don't you just wait until you're not surrounded by 1800 other people? i suggest doing that. you should try it, okay? okay good.

and today i did...

absolutely nothing. just like every other day at school. okay, not every other day but most of the days. we do nothing at all. nothing that amounts to anything i should say. sure i'm learning, but it's not stuff that i'm going to remember. ask me about some math formulas in two weeks and i'll have no clue. they won't be of use to me anymore.

school seems to be kinda pointless to me these days. we do the same stuff in every class with the only difference being the subject material. homework is rarely ever checked for a grade and if it is checked it's checked for completion. meaning i can just scribble some stuff down and i get full credit. why did i have to even attempt at this, i know there are some kids in my class who wrote down nonsense, yet they're going to get the credit just because it's only for completion.

after taking a test i promptly forget everything i have just learned and i do not look at any past material until finals time. and then i only have to look at the main idea because so much is shoved onto those final tests that you can't really go into much depth on anything for fear of leaving out some other important topic. every class is the same song just a different verse.

memorization

i have an essay quiz today in ap bio about transcription and translation. i'm not a fan of either of those and they just get all jumbled and mixed up in my head. or i just completely blank and nothing at all comes to mind. i have found that the more i write something down, or type it up for this case, the better chance i have to remember it so today i'm going to be running through the processes of transcription and translation.

transcription is the synthesis of RNA, specifically mRNA under the direction of DNA.

translation is the synthesis of a polypeptide chain and it occurs under the direction of mRNA.

((the base sequence of mRNA is translated into the amino acid sequence of polypeptides at the ribosomes))

some stuff to keep in mind...

• DNA splits into two separate strands, the coding and template strand. the template strand provides the sequence of bases while the coding strand just kinda hangs out and sits there. the coding strand does do one thing though, it has the TATA box which shows the prompter where to attach and then start scanning for the start codon, AUG.


• a codon is an mRNA triplet written 5'-->3', AUG is the start codon. it codes for methionine. redendancy is when multiple codons code for the same amino acid and wobble is when the third nucleotide in the sequence doesn't matter.
  

specifics of transcription:

step 1. initiation: RNA polymerase II binds to the prompter (the TATA box on the coding strand) and begins to unwind the DNA. RNA poly II then initiates RNA synthesis by finding the start codon AUG.

step 2. elongation: RNA poly II moves downstream, continually unwinding the DNA and elongating the RNA transcript. the RNA transcript is built 5'-->3', which means the nucleotides are added to the 3' end. confusing, yes i know.

step 3. termination: RNA transcript is released and RNA poly II detaches from the DNA. elongation continues for a bit after RNA poly II transcribes the termination sequence.

RNA processing because the mRNA just transcribed is not yet good enough to be used for translation

• a 5' cap consisting of a modified guanine nucleotide is added to the 5' end of the pre-mRNA transcript. a poly A tail consisting of multiple adenine nucleotides is added to the 3' end. these caps serve three purposes. 1- they facilitate the export of the mRNA from the nucleus. 2- the protect the mRNA transcript from enzymes. 3- they aid in the ribosomal attachment of the 5' end.

the RNA still isn't ready, it now has to go through splicing. RNA splicing is the removal of the noncoding segments (introns) so that the transcript only contains the coding segments (exons). EXONS-GOOD. INTRONS-BAD. these nifty little things called snRNPs (snerps) are needed to remove the introns and then a snRNP and protein combo form a spliceosome form and they reattach the exons back together. then there are these ribozymes and they're just RNA molecules that act as proteins and i'm not really sure what purpose they serve. TADA YOU HAVE JUST COMPLETED TRANSCRIPTION. FEEL FREE TO MOVE ON TO TRANSLATION NOW.

some more stuff to keep in mind...

• in translation the cell is interpreting a gentic message from mRNA and using it to build a polypeptide chain. it's tRNA [transfer RNA] that is used to interpret the codons on the mRNA.
• anticodons are found on tRNA and they're complementary to the codons found on mRNA. this is how the tRNA knows which amino acid comes next in the sequence. the amino acids attach to the 3' end of the tRNA when it pulls them to the ribosome from the nucleus.
• a nifty little guy called aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase is what attaches the amino acids and little tRNAs together.
• ribosomes are made up of rRNA [ribosomal RNA]. they have three binding sites, the P site, the A site, and the E site. the P site holds the tRNA carrying the growing polypeptide chain. the A site holds the tRNA carrying the next amino acid. the E site discharges the tRNAs.

specifis of translation:

step 1. initiation: mRNA, tRNA (with the first amino acid in tow)and ribosomal subunits are brought together. the mRNA and tRNA are bound to the small ribosomal subunit and then scans downstream until the start codon (AUG) is found. transcription starts here.

step 2. elongation: amino acids added to the polypeptide chain one by one as tRNA anticodons match up to the mRNA codons. there are three steps within elongation: 1- codon recognition 2- peptide bond formation 3- translocation. elongation continues until the stop codon reaches the A site.

step 3. termination: UAG, UAA, and UGA are the stop codons. release factors bind to the stop codon, adding a water molecule to the polypeptide chain. this causes the peptide chain to be released.

AN EXTREMELY SHORT VERSION OF WHAT HAPPENS ALL IN FIVE STEPS

1. RNA transcribed from DNA template
2. pre-mRNA spliced and modified into mRNA (eukaryotes only)
3. mRNA attaches to ribosome in preperation for translation
4. amino acids attach to appropriate tRNA anticodon
5. tRNAs and their amino acid meet the mRNA codons at the ribosome and polypeptide chain grows.