Reading Responses and Vocabulary Summaries

Genetics Reading Responses

Please read the 4 readings in the folder “Readings for Week 4”. NOTE:
One article
is simply a
pedigree; a graph to help us understand the genetics of a family
.
Students are to use their own
words and not copy text from another source unless specifically asked to. Make sure your
response answers the question asked. Some questions are opinion questions;
there is no right or
wrong answer, but I want you to make it clear you have thought about the question being asked.
1)Please read the very short document called “Punnett”. There is a lot of information on this
document even though it’s really short.
This question ties back to our earlier discussion about statistically significant. Why
is
human genetics, geneti
cs of an organism that typically has
a small number of children,
difficult
to predict with a
Punnett
square?
2) This question has two parts and can be answered succinctly. Sticking with the example given
on this worksheet:
What is the chance of having a yellow pea i
n the offspring if the parental
generation has the genotype of Yy and yy? How many generations before you have the
chance of seeing a pea with the genotype YY?
3) Please read the document called “The Life of Gregor Mendel”. So many scientists are defined
by early failures. Knowing what you do about the peer review process,
why is taking defeat and
criticism so important for good science? Is comparison to the current peer review system
useful when discussing a historical figure who lived so long ago?
4) The
paper discusses the idea of “Blending theory” and “Spontaneous generation” in contrast
to the findings of inheritance that Mendel discovered.
How are the two concepts different?
While we credit Mendel for his advancement of the field, was the blending the
ory
completely wrong?
5) We br
iefly discussed model organisms in class, but only briefly (Blink and you might have
missed it)
Peas make a great model organism, but the end of Mendel’s life saw him working with
Why was
Hieracium
a bad plant to study? What does this tell us about model organisms?
6) Please read the
paper “
2041
–
2223
–
2
–
14.pdf
” and
the pedigree on the pdf
“
pedigree_hemophilia
”
.
There
’
s no wrong way to look at dat
a, but IN YOUR OPINION, which
gave more/better information, the article or the pedigree? Which do you think helped you
understand the spread of hemophilia?
One of the best ways of proving you understand a concept is to explain it to
someone else. In this
case, I want you to take the following vocabulary and define the terms, words, or phrases for me.
Definitions should not exceed 100 words each. Make sure you are using your own words in the
definition; do not copy them from another so
urce. Words to be defined are
BOLD
and
underlined
.
For week 4, we’re looking at how scientists can easily look at heredity and how information is
passed between generations. Please define these terms from the readings. All of the words appear
in the readin
gs, but you are encouraged to look at other resources to help with your definitions:
Heredity
Genotype
Phenotype
Allele
Diploid
P Generation
F1 Generation
Hybridization
Pedigree
Punnett Square

P
lease read the
2
readings in the folder “Readings for Week 4”
and watch the two videos
.
Answers s
hould range from 50 to 200 words. Students are to use their own words and not copy
text from another source unless specifically asked to. Make sure your response answers the
question asked. Some questions are opinion questions; there is no right or wrong a
nswer, but I
want you to make it clear you have thought about the question being asked.
1) Please
w
atch
the two videos
first.
I know you
’
re going to do this in your definitions, but
explain the difference between a gene
, a chromosome, and DNA
. If we look at a
random
piece of
human DNA, which
could
we
be
looking at?
2) The
re is a concept sometimes dubbed
“one g
ene, one polypeptide”. This presents one
definition of a gene as the region of DNA responsible for encoding one peptide. Knowing what
you know about proteins, how does this explain that we associate genes with specific traits and
functions within the cell.
3) This one is a bit of a leap, but
I want you to really think about this
.
The mRNA is read 3
nucleotides at a time. These 3 nucleotides compose something called a codon
. Why do you
hypothesize that
codons are 3 nucleotides long?
4
) Please read the paper by Dr. Crick in 1970. Crick talks about how it was not obvious that
the
sequence of a protein alone
as described in each gene wou
ld lead to a functional protein. Why is
it not obvious that if you know the sequence of a protein letter by letter, that you would end up
with a protein that has a specific function?
5
) Crick makes it clear that when we talk about the central dogma, we are
talking about the flow
of information, and not the machinery or the control mechanism. Why does he make that that
point clear?
6)
Read the last paper about the central dogma.
This paper is short, but dense. You may have to
read it a couple of times.
This con
textualizes the Crick paper as well as his initial explanation of
the
central dogma. Part of the point is
that
it refutes
“
Lamarkism
”
.
According to this paper w
hy
would changes in function (
proteins
) not result in a change in
the
characteristics of the next
generatio
n?
One of the best ways of proving you understand a concept is to explain it to someone else. In this
case, I want you to take the following vocabulary and define the terms, words, or phrases for me.
Definitions should not exceed 100 words each. M
ake sure you are using your own words in the
definition; do not copy them from another source. Words to be defined are
BOLD
and
underlined
.
For week 3, we’re looking at how information in DNA is converted into specific functions in the
cell via protein syn
thesis. Please define these terms from the readings. All of the words appear in
the readings, but you are encouraged to look at other resources to help with your definitions:

Gene

Central Dogma

Transcription

Translation

Lamarkism

Macromolecule

Genetic Code

mRNA

tRNA

Ribosome

Additional Video:

Video 1: