Category Archives: IBDP Biology
How to regrow a rainforest – Willie Smits on TED Talks
Willie and the orangs
My Grade 12 class have looked at this story before, and now we can hear about it from Willie Smitts, a primatologist and conservationist who has led a huge project to replant and revive a section on rainforest in Borneo. They have taken over 8,000 hectares of scorched and cleared land and are returning it to a habitat worthy of orang-utans and many more endangered species.
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Smits was featured in TED2009 and here he is with his story of how they regrew the rainforest.
The Kidney
Last topic for the HL Students!
The Kidney is great – it filters our blood, makes urine and ties together so many aspects of the course – cells, membrane transport, osmosis, chemistry of life, hormonal control. We can look at how it is similar to and different from the liver and how its structure reflects its function. I love the kidney.
Here’s the presentation, with some data-y questions at the end.
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More resources here:
Best kidney animation ever from biologymad.com
Quick guide to thekidney from kidneypatientguide.org.uk
Complete tutorial from Sumanas
Bilingual (Chinese and English) guide to the kidney, with rave tunes from hkedcity.net
More Loop of Henle action from the University of Colorado
Hormonal control of ADH from McGraw Hill
Diabetes recap from MedMovie
Kidney quiz from ZeroBio
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Want to see a kidney stone?
Find out more about kidney stones here.
Enzymes (Core and AHL & C2)
Covering the core and AHL/ SL Option C content, here is a rundown of enzymes, from active sites to end-product inhibition. Again, there are lots of animation resources out there, many of which are used in the presentation – click on the shadowed images to go there.
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Check out this article on the potential use of an enzyme in second-generation biofuels.
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Enzyme Basics:
What is an enzyme? from Northland (the best one – including inhibitors, pathways and feedback inhibition)
How enzymes work from McGraw Hill
Enzyme basics from KScience.co.uk
A full collection of savable enzyme animations from Husam Medical
And John Giannini’s Enzyme collection is nice and clear.
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Enzyme activity and kinetics
Nice virtual lab from KScience.co.uk
Enzyme kinetics from Wiley Interscience
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Denaturation:
Protein denaturation from McGraw Hill
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Inhibition
Complete tutorial from Wiley Interscience
What is an enzyme? from Northland
Feedback (end product) inhibition from McGraw Hill
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And here’s a quick run down on YouTube:
Protein Synthesis: Transcription and Translation (2009)
This is a re-post for the class of 2009 to revise and the 2010 group to catch on the first time… As always, click on the shadowed images for a link to an animation, or visit the links posted below.
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Core (for everyone):
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Additional Higher Level:
Click4Biology page: Transcription – Translation
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Further resources:
There are many decent Flash animations and the like on the internet, but the majority cannot be embedded. Below this YouTube video, there are some direct links to resources, some of which can be easily saved.
Learn.Genetics @ Utah
Transcribe and Translate (good, basic, interactive)
How do fireflies glow? (puts it in context)
University of Nebraska:
Protein Synthesis overview (Good enough for SL)
Transcription Details (fits DP Bio HL very well)
Translation Details (fits DP Bio HL very well)
John Kyrk: (visit the parent site at www.johnkyrk.com – excellent)
Transcription (fits DP Bio HL very well)
Translation (fits DP Bio HL very well)
St. Olaf College
Transcription (clear and simple)
Translation (clear and simple)
EDIT: Two more animations (from mrhardy’s wikispace, original source unknown)
WH Freeman
RNA Splicing tutorial (HL only)
Bio3400
Translation with a genetic code dictionary (shows position in the ribosome)
Some more in-depth animations (newly added):
Translation from Wiley Interscience
Translation from LSU Medschool
Translation from The Chinese University in Hong Kong
Protein targeting from Rockefeller University
The Transport System (Core and HL-FHP)
The Transport System (Core)
Click4Biology page here.
And loads of useful links from North Harris College.
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Higher Level Students:
Download here: transport-system.ppt
And here’s the Click4Biology link
Medmovie.com has a large collection of animations which are great for this unit. We can’t link to them directly, but it’s worth having a look around.
The Cardiac Cycle:
Hyper Heart animation and graphs from the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Biointeractive from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Control of the Heart Beat:
A few good links to try from Washburn Rural High School
And don’t forget the Medmovie resource…
Atherosclerosis and Coronary Heart Disease:
Medmovie has good animations for atherosclerosis, heart attacks and heart bypass surgery. There aren’t many that are better…
Production of Tissue Fluid and Lymph:
Hydrostatic and osmotic pressure (fluid exchange) from McGraw Hill
Capillary exchange from coolschool.ca (they have other good resources, too)
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Bonus features:
For a good (tricky) prac, here’s a virtual EKG package from skillstat.com
And here’s a decent heart structure tutorial from Gateway Community College
And why not have a go at open heart surgery from abc.net.
DNA Replication (Core and AHL)
This topic is well-resourced on the internet – almost too well! Standard level students need to know the bare basics, which equates to the process of replication of the leading strand for the HL students. Here is the presentation, with some good links to follow:
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DNA Replication animations:
St. Olaf’s nice and clear animation.
Another clear one from Wiley.
Nicely illustrated one from Harvard.
John Kyrk’s complicated molecular animation.
The Meselsohn Stahl experiment from Sumanas.
More animations from North Harris College and from LearnersTV.
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Revision materials:
Click4Biology pages: Core & HL
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Here is the top-rated video on the subject on YouTube:
i-Biology 