STENTORS!

Everyone reading this probably knows I'm a huge biology nerd. There's lots of proof for that. But I honestly am amazed in every class at the details of God's creation in the world and in our bodies.
-Did you know that you have ten times more bacterial cells in and on your body than you have your own human cells? It's OK, those bacterial cells are good for you, as long as they stay where they are supposed to be.
-You have a microscopic tail of a cell that is as long as your leg. This allows you to have reflexes in your foot. Think it'd be easy to snap a string that long? Yet that tail, called an axon, stays together!
-The reason people say you shouldn't swim after you eat is due to your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. Normally, your parasympathetic nervous system is in action. Normal heart rate, smooth digestion, normal breathing, and such. However, when your swim, or do any kind of exercise, the sympathetic nervous system checks in. You may have heard of this as your "fight or flight." This causes digestive actions to slow or stop. So if you exercise after a meal, you will get a stomach ache.
-ATP synthase is the coolest enzyme ever. An enzyme is a protein that catalyzes chemical reactions in your body. ATP synthase is an enzyme that will take in Hydrogens through a channel. Then, the hydrogen connects to a crank inside the protein. This crank goes all the way around until the protein connects with the needed molecules, making ATP so you have energy! Isn't crazy how there is a crank inside these small proteins!?
-Oxygen is actually toxic. Yep, oxygen should be killing our cells. However, at the very very end of the process for making ATP, oxygen is the final acceptor of electrons, making water. So making energy for our cells saves us from oxygen, which we continually breathe in. Craziness!
-Ok, I just have one more thing that I HAVE to share with you. Stentors. These are eukaryotic cells (so plant and animal cells). We looked at these in our Microbiology lab last week. Macroscopically, they look like blue fuzzies in water. Under a microscope, they look like a blue whale! With their cilia (hair-like structures for movement), they swim back and forth from their 'tale.' As if this wasn't cool enough, Dr. Carlson gave us food for the stentors. So when we added food onto the slide, these little whales would stretch out from their tail to reach the food, pick it up with the cilia on their mouth, and then retract all the way back into the tale in order to eat. Then it would start swimming again to look for more food. If any of you come to visit me, I will ask Dr. Carlson to leave the lab open so I can show you. That's how cool they are! And they are only $9 per jar! Too bad microscopes are too expensive, or I would totally keep some as pets.
I hope you enjoyed these fun facts. I'm sure I will share many more over the next few years!