Understanding the principles of cell and molecular biology is an important part of the biology curriculum at Longwood. Our first real introduction as biology majors to cell and molecular biology is in BIOL 250, intro to cell and genetics. Later on as we progress through the curriculum, we can take courses such as microbiology, immunology and cell biology. In my introduction to cell and genetics class, I did an experiment with yeast on strawberries and raspberries, and looked at if there were any differences in the amount and/or species. Our final results were only for our raspberry sample, as our strawberry sample did not work. We found that raspberries had a few different species of yeast, which is conclusive with previous data on yeast and fruits. This project was pretty basic, but we did use some advanced techniques such as PCR and amplicon amplification. This class and lab allowed me to understand cell biology and genetics at the basic level using yeast as a model organism.
My next course that focused on cell and molecular biology was my microbiology class I took the Fall semester of my Junior year. This class was heavily focused on bacteria, but we occasionally discussed yeast and viruses. The project that we did for the class was a lot more up to our own accord than my BIOL 250 class. We were given some structure, but we had to come up with what we wanted to test and how we were going to test it. While intimidating at first, it was actually very fun to have this much freedom, and I was happy with the results we got. We decided to look at if there were differences in the amount and species of bacteria on dog vs. cat paws. We found that the cats we tested had more bacterial cells on their paws than the dogs we tested. This project gave us a lot of freedom and helped us better understand cell and molecular biology, as well as how to develop our own experiments and perform them. This knowledge will follow me as I continue my journey to becoming a veterinarian.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1XLB3CPuX3nXx0vnjHoPgDClTTFE1Aqj4