Starting cellular diversity activity

Daily Questions for October 22nd

The structures found in a living cell can be compared to the parts of a factory that produces cars. Which part of the factory is most similar to the nucleus of a living cell?

(1) a conveyor belt that transports materials 

(2) a storage bin that holds the pieces needed to assemble a car

(3) the computer room that controls the assembly process

(4) the generator that provides energy for the factory

Certain poisons are toxic to organisms because they interfere with the function of enzymes in mitochondria. This results directly in the inability of the cell to

(1)  store information

(2)  build proteins

(3)  release energy from nutrients

(4)  dispose of metabolic wastes 

To answer these two questions all you really needed to do was look in your notes about the nucleus and the mitochondria.  Remember, the nucleus is in "charge" because it contains the DNA - the DNA provides the instructions for the cell.  The Mitochondria is responsible for transferring energy from  organic molecules into ATP. 

After this I "lectured" on the notes.  You had all of the notes down but we haven't had a discussion on them.  We made it through all the notes then started into our cellular diversity lab.  In this activity you took a look at a variety of tissue samples under the microscope.  Some were plant, animal and also one specimen of bacterial.  Here are similar images to what you looked at under the microscopes.

This was bacteria.  they were VERY Hard to see under
our microscopes because they are SOOO small!!

There were leaf cells

Liver Tissue (Notice the purple dots are the nucleus
and they are surrounded by pink "fluid."  That
would be the cytoplasm which is stained so that we
can see it.)

Lung tissue.   Notice how much space surrounds these cells
these are pockets for air to be trapped.

This is a similar image to the pine stem you looked at.
Most notable features here are the large central vacuoles
and the very present sturdy cell walls.

This was the heart muscle.  These are very hard to see
but again, the purple dots are the nuclei.

This was the image of cork.  Our cork slide was pretty old so
there was a lot of "damaged" parts to the cork.  What you were
to be looking at where these finer features.