Petri dish

The practice of agriculture, since its early beginnings, has suffered from pests and diseases that cause large losses. Over the last 100 years, the hunt for an effective pesticide has become crucial for agriculture. However, the use of these pesticides have brought more harm than good. Methoxychlor is a synthetic, organochlorine pesticide developed to replace dichlorophenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in 1948. It was preferred due to its low toxicity in mammals and shorter half life than that of DDT,…

States, and the same medicine from 1972 is being used for it (Engber). There hasn’t been a new medication released since then because a new drug/treatment needs to be passed through the three M’s (Engber). The first step is to grow the drug in a petri dish to see if it will slow the growth of the bacteria (Engber). If the drug/treatment passes that step then they…

Introduction Plant reproduction is a fascinating part of biology. Plants, specifically angiosperms, have unique ways of reproducing. Angiosperms use pollen vectors such as insects, mammals, birds, wind, and even water to deliver their pollen grains to stigmas. The plant of study for this experiment was Mimulus guttatus, also known as the monkeyflower. This plant produces yellow flowers that are bilaterally symmetrical and have five petals. Interestingly, their petals are fused together and…

Even a food as simple as an apple can be manipulated into something new. Walk down the produce aisle of any supermarket, and there are probably a dozen different varieties of apples, if not more. One such variety is the SweeTango apple. SweeTango apples are a hybrid fruit, not resulting from naturally occurring cross-pollination, but created in a laboratory at the University of Minnesota (Seabrook). The parent plants of a SweeTango are the Honeycrisp and Zestar apples, both of which are…

The Pioneering of IVF It is amazing to know that there are people who were born into the world unnaturally. It may seem odd, but there are people who were once a test tube baby. The term test tube baby came from the late Dr. Edwin Carl Wood. Dr. Wood played an important role in the process of developing and commercializing the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) technique which has molded society into accepting the process of a scientifically fabricated child. Without Dr. Wood’s IVF research and…

Animal Testing in the United States Every day animals are being used for scientific research either leaving them mutated or dead. Imagine your dog being taken into the lab for various cruel experiments that lasts for weeks. After being tested on multiple times your dog can’t take it anymore and ends up dying. Does that seem right for any animal to go through pain, and potentially risk their lives for research? “Each year in the United States an estimated 20-70 million animals—from cats, dogs,…

Tardigrades are fascinating organisms that the greater understanding of has potential to lead to advances in medicine, such as by allowing for increased tolerance of radiation in human cells (Hashimoto et al. 2016), and the cryopreservation of organs for transplantation (Kletetschka and Hruba 2015). Perhaps, it may even allow living people to be preserved so that they may undergo long-distance space travel without aging, and thereby may enable colonization of other planets. Anything that may…

Today and for dozens of years before, animals have been used to test cosmetics, household cleaners, and hygiene products. Is this considered animals abuse? Animal abuse is defined as, “The human infliction of suffering or harm upon any non-human animal, for purposes other than self-defense or survival” (dictionary.com). Animals used for experimentation is abuse. There is no logical reasoning for using innocent animals such as, mice, rats, dogs, cats, rabbits, primates, and others that are locked…

because it conflicts with their religious or spiritual beliefs, but do these beliefs outweigh the needs of the common good in a global economy that supplies its food from an array of countries? It must be noted that food is a common transmission and petri dish for many diseases. Remember mad cow disease? In the global economy of today, viruses and diseases mutate into vicious and incurable advisories which can spread from continent to continent with the ease of modern aircrafts. Ebola, zika,…

Kanamycin sulphate and rifampicin were purchased from Hangzhou Dayangchem Co., Ltd., Zhejiang, China. Acetonitrile and ethanol (High performance liquid chromatography, HPLC, grade) were purchased from Merck, Germany. Sodium dihydrogen phosphate, phenylisocyanate, triethylamine, orthophosphoric acid (analytical reagent grade) and silicone oil (viscosity 10 cSt) were purchased from Sigma–Aldrich, St. Louis, USA. Size 3 hard gelatin capsules were kindly donated by Capsugel Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.…