Woolton Tutors

Do you have biology mocks or exams coming up? Come and join us for A-level biology exam paper practice in our friendly, supportive masterclass sessions.

More information here:

A-level biology exam technique masterclasses Weekly online A-level biology exam technique masterclasses for Year 12 and 13 students. Hosted by Dr John Ankers of Woolton Tutors.

https://wooltontutors.co.uk/how-to-make-a-revision-timetable-that-works/

Our blog on how to make a revision timetable that works. Hope it's useful for you. :-)

How to make a revision timetable that works Making a revision timetable or a revision plan is an important step in learning anything. We've already written a post on how to revise, here we're sharing what you need to bring those ideas together in a revision plan. We find that revision is most effective as part of your weekly routine alongside...

A belated Happy New Year to all of our students, parents and friends! I hope 2026 brings you health, happiness and success in whatever your plans are.

John

AQA A-level biology exam technique masterclasses

These are 55 minutes sessions focussing on exam questions from different topics every session. We look at how to answer the questions effectively, and tips and tricks for getting all the marks.

Year 12 (topics 1-4) on Tuesday evenings at 6:05PM
Year 13 (topics 5-8) on Wednesday evenings at 6:05PM

Please see the masterclass page for more details:
https://wooltontutors.co.uk/a-level-biology-masterclasses

Please do let me know if you'd like to join!

John

Dr John Ankers
Woolton Tutors

We still have a couple of spaces left on each of our A-level biology exam technique masterclasses.

Tuesdays from 30/09/25 for Year 12 topics
Wednesdays from 01/09/25 for Year 13 topics

Helping you apply your knowledge to real exam questions on different A-level biology topics each week.

A-level biology exam technique masterclasses Weekly online A-level biology exam technique masterclasses for Year 12 and 13 students. Hosted by Dr John Ankers of Woolton Tutors.

A new blog post on p-values, statistics and significance in A-level biology. Hope it helps!

How to use the p-value in A-level biology The problem with biological processes is that they’re messy. The same measurements taken on different days are likely to be slightly different (in some cases very different) due to the random nature of biological molecules sloshing around in cells. Scientists call this randomness “noise”. Nois...

Good luck to all our A-level biology students getting their results today! You've all worked so hard. Well done! :-)

Stereo Balance
Inside our ears, in a region called the cochlea, we have millions of tiny hair-like bristles called stereocilia. They wave around as sound floods over them, like arms at a music festival (although 10,000-times smaller). Watching this cochlea Coachella inside mouse ears, researchers find clues to how our hearing works. A high-powered microscope peers inside, highlighting waving stereocilia in purple, bunched together at 'roots' highlighted in green. The team find that properly formed bundles of stereocilia rely on a careful balance of a protein called taperin. Mice with too little or too much taperin lose their precisely arranged stereocilia, and have impaired hearing. They believe that taperin helps the stereocilia to remain flexible after a blast of loud noise which might otherwise lead to permanent damage in mice or human ears.

Written by John Ankers Woolton Tutors

Image from work by Inna A. Belyantseva & Chang Liu, and colleagues
Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD; Dept of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA National Institutes of Health (NIH) Indiana University
Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Published in Journal of Cell Biology, June 2025

Originally on bpod.org.uk/archive/2025/7/23
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Beautiful biochemistry! Writing with BPoD .

Natural Chemistry
Chemistry and biology have always worked hand in hand. Biochemists explore the chemical properties that make biological processes work – revealing huge variety in the proteins, sugars, fats and acids that make up our metabolism, genetic code, cells and well… everything else. Chemistry is also vital when considering biocompatibility – how suited foreign chemicals might be to life inside the body. Artificial polymer blends, like these pictured, might be used to make implants – but the chemical properties of 'new' polymer mixtures are unknown. Here a new super resolution microscopy technique, zooms in on colourful dyes, some of which are repelled by oxygen-containing chemical groups, leaving black swirls in detailed chemical patterns invisible to the naked eye. Such details may make a difference when choosing biocompatible polymers and perhaps between a successful surgery and a rejected implant – underline the importance of keeping an eye on the chemistry.

Written by John Ankers Woolton Tutors

Image from work by Dongmin Lee, Uidon Jeong and Doory Kim
Department of Chemistry, Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea 한양대학교 Hanyang University
Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Published in Science Advances, March 2025

Originally on bpod.org.uk/archive/2025/6/15
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Long Term Plans
While many cells in a new embryo follow a body plan to carefully flesh out limbs and tissues, a special group of cells is stowed for a journey much longer than nine months. Nurtured at all costs, primordial germ cells hold the potential to become the embryo’s future s***m or eggs. Investigating this fragile process is challenging, but here researchers make a discovery after growing an artificial early embryo, a gastruloid, from human embryonic stem cells. They watch as specific pools of cells emerge, just as in the early developmental stage called gastrulation (highlighted here in different colours). Investigating the fingerprint-like patterns of genes in the gastruloid cells, researchers find cells behaving like primordial germ cells, opening the way for further studies into how these important messengers keep our genetic ancestry safe into adulthood.

Image created using Leica Microsystems microscopy

Written by John Ankers Woolton Tutors

Image from work by Jitesh Neupane and Gabriele Lubatti, and colleagues
Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Munich, Germany Gurdon Institute Helmholtz-Munich
Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Published in Science Advances, March 2025

Originally on bpod.org.uk/archive/2025/5/18
You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Bluesky