Over the course of the semester here at Longwood, I’ve learned about the major principles of biology, which include gene theory, cell theory, evolution theory and homeostasis. These were definitely the most prevent in my intro level courses, such as BIOL 120, 250 and 251, and I’ve been able to delve deeper into the principles with my higher level courses, such as genetics and microbiology.

BIOL 250, or Intro into Genetics and Cell Biology, was when I was able to first learn about most of these major principles. One of the topics we really went into was gene theory, which is where traits are passed down through gene transmission from ones parents. This also means that the characteristics that one has is a result of the traits passed down from these genes. In this class we got the chance to swab our spit and test for several gene traits and to see if they were present in us. This was really cool, because even if we knew that we had the trait, such as blue eyes, we could see in our results where it confirmed it. This was done through the observation of SNPs, which are an abundant form of genome variation that act as biological markers that can be used to track the inheritance of genes. Some of the traits we looked into included eye color, curly hair, cilantro aversion and photic sneeze reflex.

In my sophomore year I took BIOL 251, or Intro into Evolution and Ecology, where I got to learn more about evolution theory and how humans and the world have changed over time together. For this class, we really focused on environmental changes, and how we as people have caused so much of what has happened. But we also focused on how characteristics of people have changed as a result of the environment around them. We had a project that focused on human demography and survivorship curves, and we pulled data from local cemeteries that were in Farmville to see how lifespan had changed over the years. This was cool because even before running statistical tests and plotting the data, you could see this obvious trend of increasing lifespan. It was even cooler to then go into the whys behind this trend, and how logically it makes that sense that with technological and medical advancements, we’d have longer lives.

In Cell biology in my junior year, I was able to learn more about cell theory, since the whole class was literally about cells and where they came from and what they do. Cell theory has three main components to it, including that cells come from pre-existing cells and that all organisms are made up of cells. The main project for this class was to try alter gene expression by changing a transcription factor. I remember this actually really difficult to learn about because there were so many factors that could affect the specific gene we were looking at. However, it was also really interesting because it was the first time that I was able to do an in-class experiment that had so many lab steps involved, and I really enjoyed it. My group looked into the suppressing insulin expression though the knockdown of the transcription factor, dFOXO. We ended up getting data that supported our hypothesis, so that was pretty cool to see in person how altering one factor can change gene expression so much.