Fall2010PittStudents

"Theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences titled 'The role of phenology in ecology and evolution' compiled and edited by Abraham J. Miller-Rushing and Jessica Forrest\nOctober 12, 2010; 365 (1555)"

C3: Communicating Climate Change Twelve science centers across the country using citizen science to explore local indicators of climate change.

This is a very structured interactive animation about PCR. It has an associated background essay, and some discussion questions. The thing I like about it is that it is an application of transcription. From the site: "In this interactive activity adapted from the University of Nebraska's Library of Crop Technologies, learn the basic steps of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique used to produce short sections of DNA for analysis. In this technique, various components are combined in a microfuge tube and heated in a thermal cycler. The activity details the process, which results in thousands of identical copies of a DNA fragment. Note: The activity provides a simulation of the process. The characterizations of depicted components and their behaviors should not be taken literally."

Very nice demo of PCR, but this is an application of DNA replication rather than transcription.

I showed this to my class last year. This is an excellent view of translation and also alows you to do it yourself

Nice animation lesson with quizes and review, but this one seems to be on DNA replication not translation.

choose bases and amino acids

nice interactive simulation of transcription and translation. I like that it give tips if you make a mistake to get you back on track.

This page provides a definition of translation along with the process of translation and the key factors involved. I like this page because at first it gives a general overview of translation, but then if you would like to obtain more detail about the process, you can click the linked terms to learn more.

Nice online dictionary for biology terms. I wish these were around when I was taking intro to bio.

This kept my attention for the whole video and is a nice basic overview for both processes. I also liked how it was supposed to be in real time instead of making it a slow step by step process of memorizing.

This animation defintitely gives a different, more detailed, view of the processes than typical animations.

I liked the detail involved in explaining each component of translation. You could stop the video anytime by scrolling over a component on the top part of the screen to learn more about it.

Great animation with all the basic info and important details beyond what might be normally learned in intro to bio.

Has a great model and animation of transcription initiation.

Cool model, but pretty complicated stuff, even for me.

Details Francis Crick's Central Dogma. Most of this information is found in intro Bio classes, but it's still an interesting paper.

I love the historical context of this article. We tend to take for granted some of the basic tenents that are in every bio textbook without any thought to all of the experimental and intellectual leaps required to discover them in the first place.

This video describes the key factors involved in and the process of transcription. I like this video because it gives a simple general overview of what is happening during transcription through audio and visual means.

central dogma animation, includes protein folding and trafficking

I chose this animation because I thought it gave a basic, straight-forward explanation of the transcription and translation process using simple diagrams.

This website provides links to many different biological databases and resources and is user friendly because it is organized into different topics.

This website provides a way to search many databases at once for protein and nucleic acid sequences. It has easy to follow tutorials and has sample lessons that can be used along with the database. "The Biology WorkBench is a web-based tool for biologists. The WorkBench allows biologists to search many popular protein and nucleic acid sequence databases. Database searching is integrated with access to a wide variety of analysis and modeling tools, all within a point and click interface that eliminates file format compatibility problems."

this was one of the biology databases i originally found that I thought would help teach biology in an interactive way. It has resources for many subjects, but there is a biology one in particular. One tool I found interesting was the podtutor. "PodTutor includes audio study tracks, diagrams, and detailed text notes, which can be instantly Podcast to your pc, or mac, using iTunes, and stored on any mp3 player, putting the subject knowledge of senior examiners, experienced teachers and tutors in your pocket."