Today I will discussing how I have been able to ​​analyze and apply the major principles of organismal biology. Some principles of organismal biology include function of organisms, all living things descending from a common ancestor, cell theory etc. However, I have not taken many organismal classes. My first encounter with organismal biology was in BIOL 288. In this class I wrote a general audience article and made and presented a powerpoint on pig hearts being used as xenotransplants for human hearts. This was something I was very interested in because to me it seemed like the future of science. However, I was not really familiar pigs or organs, I was only familiar with cells. This knowledge of cells helped me however, understand cell theory which helped me understand some complications and compatibility with using a pig heart and transplanting it on a human. This also gave me my first insight on how science can be directly applied. Usually since I am a molecular biology guy. The science that is done in those kinds of labs are 3-4 steps away from being applied. My understanding then further expanded when I took BIOL 360 which is developmental biology, which I will say is categorized as a molecular/ cellular course. However, Dr. Franssen teaches the class and he is a pretty heavy Organismal biologist or EvoDevo as stated on his license plate. In this class I made a presentation on how sugar could cause a bacteria in the gut that would cause some effects in the hippocampus on rats. This means that the rats had problem remember and problem solving once the bacteria would appear on their gut. This made me wish that I had taken more organismal classes in order to learn more about their principle instead of only taking one about plants. However I was very proud that I could keep up in the BIOL 360 class even though I did not take Anatomy and Physiology and Dr. Franssen would bring that class up a lot. I will definitely use this information in my future job endeavors. This was also really cool because it was science that it applicable and that has been my new fascination as of late. This has taught me that there is a whole new field of biology that is interesting to me. I would also like to know what other fields of biology are directly applicable to every day uses in a person’s life. 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/122XPzl3-UJaG8UXpOrP731iLRU2dXwil8AhN_g4P2Gc/edit#slide=id.p

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11OAHCiQnn4x313wmp3PeUyYTn47qK3T9VU_svX0z_p8/edit#slide=id.p