Anti-biotic resistance.

Antibiotics VS Bacteria!

Who will win?

This is WAR!!!

Hello everyone. It's the one and only Epicraptor here again ready to discuss more about bacteria. Most of the time people think of bacteria as horrible creatures that cause disease but they can also be beneficial. Without them we wouldn't even be able to digest some foods. Speaking of food, certain foods are made by bacteria. Examples are cheese, yogurt and butter. Pasteurization is the process of killing all microorganisms in milk. Without it, every time we drink milk we would get sick.

 

 

Bacteria aren't only good for us, there good for plants as well. Without them plants wouldn't be able to conduct photosynthesis. Bacteria take out the nitrogen in the soil so the plants can receive it.

On the other hand bacteria can be very harmful. They can cause disease and kill millions of people every year. Strep throat, pneumonia and tuberculosis are just some of the many diseases bacteria cause. Thankfully there is medicine called antibiotics to save us.... kind of. Back when they were first invented antibiotics crushed most bacteria to a pulp. So useful that doctors decided to give them to people even when they weren't sick. Animals on farms were on a steady diet of antibiotics. Soon bacteria got used to antibiotics that they evolved. Some times when a bacteria mutates it becomes immune to certain antibiotics. It then reproduces and then you have an entire colony of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Bacteria are mutating faster than we can make new antibiotics. This has lead to the creation of super-bugs like MRSA which are resistant to most common antibiotics. MRSA has only become a threat because of our mistakes.

MRSA

 

 Links

Cheese pic  

Butter pic 

MRSA pic 

Bacteria

Bacteria

Bacteria are microscopic creatures that can vary in shape and sizes. The most common are spiral, spherical or rod shaped bacteria. All bacteria are one celled and are prokaryotic cells which means they don't have a membrane bound nucleus. Most bacteria don't have complex organelles.

 

They were the first life on Earth and are the most abundant lifeforms since there is 5 nonillion of them. 5 nonillion is a 5 followed by 30 zeros. Bacteria can live in food, water, air and even our bodies. Bacteria in your digestive track break down molecules our bodies can't break down by itself. Speaking of food, bacteria can either obtain food by photosynthesis which is what plants use or by hunting other microorganisms. Bacteria can also be evil. They are responsible for strep throat, food poisoning and a lot of other diseases. Luckily drugs called antibiotics can be taken to kill the bacteria.

 

Some can't move but others move by using tiny hairs called cilia or whip-like hair called flagella. Most bacteria reproduce asexually in a process called fission. Fission produces two cells with the same genetic material as the parent cell. Some bacteria exchange genetic material in a process that is closer to sexual reproduction. Some bacteria can reproduce very quickly. Sometimes as fast as once every 20 minutes.

Fission

There is no way life would exist without bacteria. They are among the oldest lifeforms on the planet. No one knows the exact order of events but it is thought that they evolved roughly 3.5 billion years ago, roughly the same time as other microorganisms called archeabacteria. for several billion years they were the only life on Earth. Back then there was very little oxygen in the atmosphere but bacteria changed that. Through photosynthesis they slowly filled our atmosphere with the oxygen we breathe. After all these years life on Earth's parents are still around. You can find archea in the most extreme places on the planet like hot springs, salt lakes and deep ocean vents with no sunlight.

Links

 bacteria pic 1

bacteria pic 2 

Fission gif

King of Gore

King of Gore

About 90 million years ago, meat-eating dinosaurs began undergoing big changes. They were adapting to conditions in what is now the western United States. Best known among them would be the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex, but some of its ancestors also would gone on a crazy rampage through the countryside. Consider Lythronax Argestes a new found addition to the family, it’s the earliest. And its Greek name says it all: Gore King of the Southwest.



A fossil was discovered in Utah and is declared related to the T-rex. Researchers at the Natural History Museum of Utah and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science recently published a paper detailing the new species of dinosaur Lythronax argestes, whose first name translates to "King of Gore." Mark Loewen found the 80-million-year-old bone fragments of the new dinosaur.

 

 Links

 Dino pic 1

Dino pic 2

Algae

Algae

 

As you know I did a recent post on animal-like protists and now I am doing one on plant-like protists. This blog post will be mainly about algae. Most people think of algae as disgusting goop that resides on the surface of ponds but there is much more to it than that.

Algae bloom.



A single algae.

 Algae are similar and different than plants in many ways. Just like plants, algae use photosynthesis to obtain food. Unlike plants they lack roots, stems and leaves. They are six different groups of algae all of which are different.

The first group is green algae which is the most common type of algae. Almost half of the world's oxygen comes from green algae.

 

 

Red algae live deep underwater.Red algae have chlorophyll (used for photosynthesis) but they have a red pigment instead of a green one. The reason they are red is because the red pigment helps them absorb sunlight from deep in the ocean.

 

 

Brown algae live underwater too. Many types of kelp and seaweed are a species of brown algae.

 

 

Euglenoids are next. They have a whip like flagella and eyespots that are sensitive to light.

 The celll walls of diatoms or gold-brown algae are rich in silica, the main element in glass.

 

 

Dinoflagellates have special flagella that spin them circles. They are also responsible for red tide which is an algal bloom of dinoflagellates and can harm the ecosystem. Red tide blocks out sunlight from other organisms and deplete oxygen levels in the water.

 

 

Red tide.

 

Algae are useful to use in many ways. Almost half of the oxygen on the planet comes from them. We also eat red and brown algae. Red algae makes stuff like pudding and toothpaste nice and smooth.

That's it for today see you later.

Protozoa

Protists

 

 

Today we are learning about protists. Protists are single or multicelled microrganisms. Some may seem animal or plant-like or even fungi-like by the way they eat. Scientists have classified them in four different groups based on how they move. Protozoa are the animal-like protists. They have to hunt for food like animals do.

Ciliates are the first we will learn about. They have tiny hairs called cilias all around them which help them move around. The cilias also help the protists catch small bacteria which they eat. They are the most complex protozoa because they have two nuclei, the macronucleus and the micronucleus. The macronucleus controls the daily commands. The micronucleus controls reproduction for the ciliate.



Flagelettes use whip like tails to move around. They can also used their tales as a lasso to capture creatures just like a cowboy.

Ameboids use a "false foot" to move. They basically change shape to move and engulf their prey.

Sporozoa are parasitic protists. With no way of moving on their own they inhabit larger living creatures and make them sick. Many diseases are sporozoa such as Malaria, which kills many people every year and are transferred by mosquito and African sleeping sickness.

It's scary that it looks like they have faces.

http://biology.unm.edu/ccouncil/Biology_203/Summaries/Protists.htm

Rare Saber-Toothed whale found

  Rare Saber-Toothed whale washes ashore in Venice beach

A rare whale known for it's saber like teeth and preference of cold water washes ashore in an unlikely place: A Venice beach. This discovery puzzles scientists as they online live up north and migrate near northern California.The saber toothed whale was loaded onto the bed of a truck early Wednesday and taken for an examination that will give scientists a rare glimpse into the lives of the elusive mammals.Covered in bites from cookie-cutter sharks, which feed by ripping round pieces of flesh from larger animals, the carcass was extremely well-preserved. The whale was probably alive when it washed ashore. Scientists say it got lost while migrating and was attacked by cookie cutter sharks. It's carcass was then pushed to the shore by waves.

 



My reaction to this is a felt sad that such a rare creature died so close to shore when it could have been saved by humans. I am glad it was found and it can be used to learn more about this rare specis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Autumn leaves

 

It's epicraptor again and I'm going to be talking about plants, again. Today we are learning about autumn leaves. Do you wonder why leaves change color in the autumn time. Some people say it is because the temperature gets colder. That is untrue.

Leaves turn orange, yellow and brown because of carotenoids. Carotenoids can be in vegetables and fruits as well. some examples of this are carrots are orange and corn is yellow.

 

Leaves turn red because of anthoycians. Anthoycians produce the color red purple and pink. Some examples are apples are red and eggplant and berries are purple.

Carotenoids and anthoycians were always there but were concealed by the chlorophyll which is what makes leaves green and produce food for the plant. The reason they are green is because the chlorophyll reflects and absorbs green light. In the fall when there is less sunlight the tree stops making chlorophyll and it wears away exposing the carotenoids and anthoycians. Soon the leaves fall off the tree just before winter and decompose. Some trees like pine trees do not lose there leaves since they are adapted to the winter.

Here are some links.

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/leaves.html

http://www.esf.edu/pubprog/brochure/leaves/leaves.htm