Back from Unbounded! The week of Mar. 4-7

This week in Biology class, the focus was learning why calcium (Ca2+) is so important in our human body. Using this question, we began to connect protein synthesis, homeostasis, hormones, and main bodily systems to the importance of calcium. The first obvious reason calcium is so important is because it is what our bones are made out of. Bone growth is controlled by osteoblasts an osteoclasts. Osteoblast create new bone while the osteoclasts break old bone down to release more calcium in the system.

Here is what usually happens in the bone "cycle."
Insulin was also another big topic this week. Insulin targets body cells, stimulating protein and muscle to allow for glucose, fructose, or galactose uptake. These sugars plus oxygen fuel ATP synthesis.

We also talked about how the muscle system contracts and relaxes. A muscle contracts because ATP and an enzyme allow for the actin and myosin heads to form a bridge. Actin has a binding site on it, allowing the myosin head to attach. The myosin head will only attach in a high energy state. This binding causes tension and the muscle will contract. Once a phosphate and ADP are released the myosin head will detach itself from the actin binding site. It will then return to its low energy state. This whole process couldn't happen if calcium didn't first change the configuration of the binding site on actin.


Here it shows why Calcium is important in this process.

Here is the process in a little more detail.