When multiplication means the same as division

There was some confusion about cell replication today which, all things considered, is kind of sad (i.e. - all things meaning that this is an upper division class and most of us have been going through the cell cycle since before high school). But - fear not - there will always be confusion. For instance, today the TA informed us that after the first part of meiosis (meiosis I) there is, in fact, no cell division (cytokinesis) and, in fact, there's not going to be a cell division until the entire meiosis's done with and both the chromosome number and the chromatid number have been reduced by half.

We stared at him. I'm sure our expressions said, very clearly, that we thought that he had lost his mind.

Most text books depict a cell division after meiosis I. In fact, most text books SAY that there is a cell division after meiosis I. I've checked, having spent considerable time in-between classes today musing over the different images of the cell cycle that I've been forced to remember within the past however many years. There will still be confusion but, if I'm lucky, it will have dissipated somewhat by the time of the midterm.

Yeah, that's always good.

Bioenergetics is as enervating as usual. We learned about creatine today which is, as it turns out, a very important compound in the body and a medical diagnostic tool to boot. Creatine's a rather oddly shaped compound (though no more oddly shaped, I suppose, than any of the other things we've been looking at) that's responsible for maintaining a steady pool of ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) in the cell. It sort of functions as the molecular equivalent of an energy storage battery type of thing. Medically it's used to test (via blood sample) to see if someone's had a heart attack since cell deaths in the heart will cause a lot of the creatine kinases (enzymes that catalyze the reaction between creatine and ATP) to be released into the blood from the dead cells. So high concentration of the kinase (abbreviated CK, I think, on the blood test) is bad news.

Also, creatine has a constant turnover rate where the body steadily converts it to creatinine, a waste product that's processed by the kidney. Therefore, elevated creatinine level is a prelude to kidney failure.

Now see, all this would be so much more fascinating if I don't have to remember the structure of the organic compound. I had thought that memorizing the structure of the 20 amino acids was bad. Clearly, I thought wrong. It's a measure of how far I've come when I find myself looking back and feeling nostalgic about the days when the most complicated compounds I've got to know are things like sodium bicarbonate and dinitrophenol.

Those were the days.

And that concludes your five minute adventure into the wonderful world of biology. Congratulations.