How to Make the Endoplasmic Reticulum With Pipe Cleaners
In your biology classes, you will often have to create models of cells and cellular organs, known as organelles. One of these organelles is the endoplasmic reticulum, or ER. There are two kinds of ER, rough ER and smooth ER. Smooth ER is mainly used for hormone secretion and steroid processing, while the rough ER, dotted with ribosomes, is used for protein synthesis. You can easily model both the rough ER and smooth ER by using pipe cleaners to create their shape. You can differentiate the rough ER from the smooth ER by using beads.
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Instructions
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Pick one set of pipe cleaners to model the smooth ER, and another to model the rough ER. Thread beads onto the pipe cleaners designated for the rough ER. These will model ribosomes, or the organs that make proteins.
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Look up a diagram of the endoplasmic reticulum, so that you are familiar with the shape that you need to create. The ER roughly resembles a stack of interconnected pancakes. Be sure that you understand this shape before you attempt to recreate it.
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Twist your pipe cleaners into shape, to form a model of the rough ER and smooth ER. You may add your models to a model of the larger cell, to make the cell model more realistic and complete.
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