Unit 5 Reflection

This unit was about DNA which is antiparallel and contains 3 parts which are a nitrogen base, a phosphate group, and a sugar. Other topic that we learned about was transcription which is when the RNA Polymerase reads and copies the gene for a protein, and translation where the ribosome reads the mRNA and translates the nucleotides into amino acids. After we learned about mutations such as frameshift mutations where either an extra base pair is put into the code or a base pair is left out. Finally we learned about gene expression where the gene is used to produce a gene product of phenotype, and gene regulation where a mechanism is used to increase or decrease the expression of a gene. One topic that I didn't really understand at first was gene expression and regulation, and one topic that I understood the most was mutations. 

I feel that I know more than I did before we started this unit, because at first I didn't understand certain topics until we went over them during class. What I think it means to be a good student is someone who listens attentively during the class and helps others when they are confused on something. I feel that I am a better student than I was before because during the beginning of the school year I didn't really participate that much when doing work with groups, and now I am participating more when doing lab work and when we have to discuss the vodcasts. 

Protein Synthesis Lab

1. The first step required to make a protein in this lab was copying the sequence of a DNA strand. After we made an mRNA copy of the strand using transcription. Transcription is when the gene is copied by an enzyme. Then after we translated the mRNA sequence into an amino acid chain or protein. Translation is when the ribosome reads the first three bases and then the amino acid is then determined by the codon.

2. The effects of changing bases in DNA molecule varies depending on what mutation occurred. The mutation that seemed to have the greatest effect was deletion, then insertion, and then substitution had the least effect to the protein. It does matter where the mutation occurs because the amino acid chain could just stop at the beginning or not have as many amino acids. If the T was near the end, then the protein would change because it would be an A near the end instead of another base which would also change what the amino acid would be.

3. In step 7 I chose deletion as the mutation, because I noticed that it had the most effect on the protein. When we had to delete a base it ended up having an amino acid chain that had less amino acids than when we used substitution and insertion as our mutations. It does matter where the mutation occurs because if a base is deleted from the beginning of a sequence and it ended up being a stop codon it would change the protein by not having a sequence.





4. A mutation could affect your life because if proteins are determined by the sequence of amino acids and a mutation occurred in the sequence, then the protein would change depending on the effect from the mutation. One mutation that I found was called duplication which is when a piece of DNA is copied abnormally once or more.

Unit 4 Reflection

Recently we did a coin sex lab, where we wanted to test how we can use probability to predict what offspring would be like in different circumstances. The coins represented the genes that the two parents might pass on to their offspring, like whether or not the trait will be homozygous or heterozygous. In our dihybrid cross simulation, there are two individuals who are double heterozygous with brown hair ans brown eyes. After we labeled a meiosis to see what the cross would be and the possible gametes. Then after we filled out our dihybrid punnet square, we expected that the offspring would mainly have brown eyes and brown hair over having blue eyes and blond hair or a combination of the two. In our actual results over half of the offspring would have brown eyes and brown hair, and only one had blond hair and blue eyes. I think that because the brown eyes and brown hair was a dominant trait, it would've had a higher chance of the children inheriting the trait. For example, in another simulation about autosomal dominance, we did a monohybrid cross where the person didn't have the bipolar disorder run in their family, but the spouse was heterozygous for that trait. In our results for that simulation, the children mainly inherited the bipolar trait over not inheriting it. The limit of using probability to predict our offspring's traits is that it may show you the possibilities of what your child could inherit but it doesn't actually guarantee that the child will actually inherit or not inherit the allele. This relates to my life because it shows how the genes from my parents could've had different possibilities that I could've inherited, and that how there are many combinations that could either be passed by autosomal inheritance or x-linked inheritance.

This unit was about genetics and sex, such as how genes can be inherited and the different processes like mitosis and meiosis. Other things we learned about was the difference between asexual and sexual reproduction, and Gregor Mendel's Sex Laws which are the Law of Segregation and the Law of Independent Assortment. My strengths were when we had to use punnet squares to predict different possibilities that offspring can inherit, and my weakness was learning and understanding how mitosis and meiosis work and why they are important.

Throughout this unit, I learned more in depth about the topics that we had to include in our infographics, because we got to go over topics that we learned previously in our vodcasts and research more about them. I feel like I am a better student, because when we started this unit, I didn't fully understand the information in the vodcasts at first, but now after learning about the topics in the vodcasts more than one time helped me understand what we were learning. One question I have is in what situations would you use a dihybrid cross over a monohybrid cross.

Human DNA Extraction Lab

In this lab we asked the question, how can DNA be separated from cheek cells in order to study it? We found that DNA can be separated by using three steps which were homogenization which breaks down the cell membranes and nuclear material, lysis which disintegrates the cell by ruptures of the membrane, and precipitation which deposits a substance in solid form from a liquid. After we added salt, detergent, pineapple juice, and isopropanol alcohol into the saliva and gatorade solution, pieces of DNA started to come up into the alcohol because the alcohol was nonpolar and the DNA was polar. In one of our previous units, we had a vodcast about the four macromolecules which included phospholipids which had a polar head and a nonpolar tail which is similar to this lab but instead the DNA is polar and the alcohol was nonpolar. This data supports our claim because it shows how using the three steps can make DNA separate from cheek cells. 

While our hypothesis was supported by our data, there could have been errors due to having to much of the gatorade solution in the test tube and not properly adding the alcohol into the test tube. These errors could've affected the results, because if the alcohol mixed into the gatorade solution the DNA wouldn't appear and having too much gatorade solution wouldn't allow the amount of alcohol that was needed for it. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend to measure the solution more accurately and do things more carefully and take more time on it. 

This lab was done to demonstrate about DNA which we learned about in the first vodcast of this unit. From this lab I learned more about the steps for extracting DNA and how DNA is polar, which helps me understand the concept of DNA. Based on my experience from this lab, I now know how to extract DNA from cells and it could help me later when I have to do something similar to this lab.