HSC Biology Question Thread

[gumscape]

Hallo! Does anyone know the host response to influenza? I can't find it in my text book and all these scholarly articles on google aren't making much sense either...
thanks!!

[preliminary17hsc18]

Hallo! Does anyone know the host response to influenza? I can't find it in my text book and all these scholarly articles on google aren't making much sense either...
thanks!!

Helloo! I found this really good video about the immune response to influenza, it's quite easy to understand. Hope it helps!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6TWFHf0g1s

[Stringy]

Hello ! 

While i was looking at some practice biology questions, i found one worth 4 marks that asks;

"Modern methods of disease control place more emphasis on prevention than on treatment"
DISCUSS this statement using atleast one named disease in your answer.

Just wondering how I would approach the question? Should i provide + / - for both prevention & treatment and relate it to a named disease, or is there a better way to respond.

Cheers.

[KT Nyunt]

Hello ! 

While i was looking at some practice biology questions, i found one worth 4 marks that asks;

"Modern methods of disease control place more emphasis on prevention than on treatment"
DISCUSS this statement using atleast one named disease in your answer.

Just wondering how I would approach the question? Should i provide + / - for both prevention & treatment and relate it to a named disease, or is there a better way to respond.

Cheers.

Hello
Yes you're correct. As this is a DISCUSS question, they're looking for you to provide points for and against. But make sure you're explicitly linking your response to the statement they provide, relating it to a named disease (ie. Malaria is a goodie)

[martinarena_]

Hello ! 

While i was looking at some practice biology questions, i found one worth 4 marks that asks;

"Modern methods of disease control place more emphasis on prevention than on treatment"
DISCUSS this statement using atleast one named disease in your answer.

Just wondering how I would approach the question? Should i provide + / - for both prevention & treatment and relate it to a named disease, or is there a better way to respond.

Cheers.

Hey there!
I'd probably go with what you've suggested, as 'discuss' refers to providing both sides of the argument, luckily, a judgement is not needed in a question like this. So, yes, you'll need to provide both advantages and disadvantages of modern methods of disease control with a named example. You'll probably have to write 2 advantages and 2 disadvantages to equate for the four marks, with an example OR maybe 2 advantages and 1 disadvantage (or the other way around) in addition to the named example. (to be safe, I'd probably chuck in 2 examples - one for an advantage and the other for the disadvantage)
Hope that helps 

[Stringy]

Cheers for the reply, this was my response in the end;

Malaria is often approached using both methods of prevention and treatment, but like any other disease there are pros and cons to methods related to disease control and relying on one more than the other can often be counter productive.

Prevention:
• Insecticide treated nets have been proven to prevent malaria transmission quite effectivley, with an approximate 20% decrease in disese cases in children under 5, and a 50% decrease in malaria related episodes. Unfortunatley since the introduction of ITNs mosquitos are slowly developing immunity, rendering certain insecticides useless, also giving rise to difficulties of producing insecticides that are effective.

Treatment:
• Antimalarial drugs like chloroquine are very effective at treating malarial infections, chloroquine specifically prevents malaria parasites growing in RBCs. This limits the spread & severity if the disease inside the host.
• Just like certain preventitive measures (ITNs), developed immunity is a problem. Overtime the overuse of chloroquine and other drugs has given rise to drug resistant parasites, this had lead to increased prices for newer treatments and the serious danger of malarial parasites that are unable to be treated effectivley.

Any tips to maybe improve this response or is it fine how it is?

[KT Nyunt]

Cheers for the reply, this was my response in the end;

Malaria is often approached using both methods of prevention and treatment, but like any other disease there are pros and cons to methods related to disease control and relying on one more than the other can often be counter productive.

Prevention:
• Insecticide treated nets have been proven to prevent malaria transmission quite effectivley, with an approximate 20% decrease in disese cases in children under 5, and a 50% decrease in malaria related episodes. Unfortunatley since the introduction of ITNs mosquitos are slowly developing immunity, rendering certain insecticides useless, also giving rise to difficulties of producing insecticides that are effective.

Treatment:
• Antimalarial drugs like chloroquine are very effective at treating malarial infections, chloroquine specifically prevents malaria parasites growing in RBCs. This limits the spread & severity if the disease inside the host.
• Just like certain preventitive measures (ITNs), developed immunity is a problem. Overtime the overuse of chloroquine and other drugs has given rise to drug resistant parasites, this had lead to increased prices for newer treatments and the serious danger of malarial parasites that are unable to be treated effectivley.

Any tips to maybe improve this response or is it fine how it is?

Yes, that's more than enough I reckon! The only thing I'd change is perhaps the length... exam time is precious so you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time writing that much on a 4 marker. (You might run out of writing space with your current length) You'd only need to cut a few words here and there, just to make it more succinct. But this isn't crucial, especially if you have small handwriting/write quickly. The importing thing is, you've attacked the question well and have addressed what you've needed to. 

[Stringy]

Yes, that's more than enough I reckon! The only thing I'd change is perhaps the length... exam time is precious so you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time writing that much on a 4 marker. (You might run out of writing space with your current length) You'd only need to cut a few words here and there, just to make it more succinct. But this isn't crucial, especially if you have small handwriting/write quickly. The importing thing is, you've attacked the question well and have addressed what you've needed to. 

thanks mate, appreciate the help!

[martinarena_]

Hi there!
I was just wondering if anyone could think of an impact that the diphtheria vaccine has had on the environment?
So far, I can only think of social impacts 

Thank you in advance 

[Kate Science]

Hi there!
I was just wondering if anyone could think of an impact that the diphtheria vaccine has had on the environment?
So far, I can only think of social impacts 

Thank you in advance 

Hey there, check out my reply in the image below   

[Kate Science]

Hey guys,
I was working on the genetics: code unbroken topic. For dihybrid crosses, does the question state if its linked or unlinked or do we need to figure it out. If so how would i figure out if its linked or unlinked?
Thanks in advance

Hi cnimm2000,
For Genetics: The Code Broken you will need to be able to determine if it is linked or unlinked for some questions.

The simple trick around this is to check out your dihybrid ratios. Let's say we cross TtPp x TtPp
- if the phenotypic ratio is 9:3:3:1, then they are not linked
--- the gametes are far enough to be crossed over TP x Tp x tP x tp
- if the phenotypic ratio is 3:1, then they are linked
--- the gametes are too close and are not split by recombination hence we'll only get e.g. TP x tp cross results

Hope that helps. Cheers!

[Mate2425]

Hi guys,
Could i please have some help in finding resources in regards to this question for an assignment - Outline the response by the host - Influenza.
Does the response mean *Immune response and the various factions of it.

Thank yooouuu!!

[KT Nyunt]

Hi guys,
Could i please have some help in finding resources in regards to this question for an assignment - Outline the response by the host - Influenza.
Does the response mean *Immune response and the various factions of it.

Thank yooouuu!!

Yes, the host response involves the immune system where a fever is induced and antibodies are produced etc. It is how the host reacts to the invading pathogen to fight against it.
This is not to be confused with symptoms ... which are like what you can observe on a patient, indicating that they have a certain disease.

Hope this helps 

[itssona]

hey how do I find the complementary mRNA strand for TACCTTGTACCC
do I just write U instead of T so its AUGGAA or do I reverse the DNA strand?

[Kate Science]

hey how do I find the complementary mRNA strand for TACCTTGTACCC
do I just write U instead of T so its AUGGAA or do I reverse the DNA strand?

Hi there 🐸

So complementary means you need to work out what its opposite strand would be. And yep, you're also right that you need to replace the new what-would-be-T's with Uracil because it's now mRNA.

The mRNA complement of TACCTTGTACCC would be:
AUGGAACAUGGG.

Happy to offer more help on transcription, translation, etc if you need clarification on anything else!