Experiment About Garbage Enzyme

Well, in this 9 days of holidays i have been doing some experiments and reseaching regarding the Garbage Enzyme that Xuelin taught me to do.

1st I collect at peel of the oranges that my family was going to throw away. Then i put it in a glass bottle then i seal it.

After a day I open it, "pissss" a gas run out of the container.... then i thought :"wow the peel f oranges release a type of colourless gas. Then i make some hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1 : Ripening of citrus fruits(oranges) emits a colourless gas
Hypothesis 2 : Decaying of citrus fruits(oranges) emits a colourless gas


Day 1(23/1/09)

I go do some research then guess what i find out....my 1st hypothesis is wrong because citrus fruits pass from immaturity to maturity to over-maturity while still on the tree. Once they are separated from the tree, they will not increase in sweetness or continue to ripen. The only way change that may happen after being picked is that they will eventually start to decay.

So i think that my hypothesis 2 is almost correct but wait....isn't that the decaying process of plants emits carbon dioxide, and guess what i smell? The smell of oranges...since when do decaying smells so nice? Oh well probably the particles diffuse between the air molecule, I guess that makes the smell so nice.

Day 2(24/1/09)
I prepare a solution of Sugar Solution using white sugars then i put about 8/10 orange peels from the glass bottle to a bottle of sugar solution that i prepared. The orange peels and sugar solution get about 6/10 capacity of the bottle. Then I thought of Xuelin's Enzyme Explosion, I very afraid that the mixture will burst out the bottle cause the bottle is very small moreover it is in my room. Despite that i don't want to mess my room so i wrapped the whole bottle with 3 layes of plastic so that is an explosion occurs i just need to throw the plastic away and no need to worried about messing my room.

Day 3(25/1/09)
I open the bottle cap, the "pissss" is heard again but where is the gas produce from? Is it the gas produce from the decompostion of plants? I don't think so because the sugar solution is hypertonic to the bacteria and microorganism. Then what produce this particular gas? I observe carfully, and I saw bubble were coming out from the orange peels. I guess there have been a chemical reaction but what cause it to react like this? My reseach and experiment are still carry on......

How A Virus Infect A Cell?

I have been thinking...why flu only attack our upper part respiratory tract? why HIV only attack our T cells?

ok here's what i think about after reading and searching the net...

Virus like can recognize the cell they want to attack only... and i think that the Glycoproteins play a huge role as glycoproteins are membrane proteins which play important roles in cell recognition.

this lead me to think that it is almost same as the "lock and key" hypothesis as i learn in the enzymes chapter. Virus is act the key and and the host cell is act as a lock.
Key and only fit in a certain or specific lock that is suitable for the key. So thats why HIV only attack the T-cells but not the other cell such as erythrocytes, nerve cells, muscles cells etc...

Quote from websites:

"The flu virus then attaches to a receptor, CD54 (Cluster of Differentiation 54), which is located on the surface of cell of the lining of the nasopharynx. The receptor fits into a docking port on the surface of the virus. Large amounts of virus receptor are present on cells of the adenoid. After attachment to the receptor, virus is taken into the cell, where it starts an infection. "

and

"CD4(Cluster of Differentiation 4) is a primary receptor used by HIV-1 to gain entry into host T cells.

HIV-1 attaches to CD4 with a protein in its viral envelope known as gp120(a glycoproteins that exposed on the surface of the HIV envelope ). The binding to CD4 creates a shift in the conformation of gp120 allowing HIV-1 to bind to surface receptors on the host cell. HIV inserts a fusion of peptide into the host cell that allows the outer membrane of the virus to fuse with the plasma membrane then evades the cell"

so i made a conclusion:
A virus only infect a certain cell base on the glycoprotein at the surface of the cells.

please correct me if i say wrong anything above thanks.