Transcript genetics

GENETICS
Genetics is the study of why you look the way you do.
Do you have brown eyes or curly hair? Genetics is the reason.
Genes you inherited from both of your parents will also be
passed on from you to the children you have.
Genes are carried on threads called
chromosomes and are used to store
information.
There are many genes on a chromosome and
they occur in pairs, one from your mom and one
from your dad.
These are called alleles. Some are stronger and
some are weaker and some are the same
These alleles are what you get from your parents and make you
look the way you do.
If your mom has brown eyes and your dad has blue eyes, you
will get one allele for each color.
If the color blue is stronger, you will have blue eyes.
If the color brown is stronger, you will have brown eyes.
Let’s say you have blue eyes…
You still have the allele for brown eyes, it was just weaker.
If you pass the weaker brown eye gene and the daddy also
passes a brown eye gene, then you will have a child with
brown eyes even though you may have blue.
Chromosomes are made of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)
This is a long string of molecules called bases.
There are four bases used and the order is what the cell uses
for genetic code.
There are two strands that lock together and twist into a spiral
called a double helix
The information in DNA must be decoded. The two
strands of the double helix are made of bases and these
are in a specific order.
To make a protein that can leave the nucleus, the DNA
makes a copy of itself. This copy is called messenger RNA.
The mRNA shuttles the code out of the nucleus where
small particles called ribosomes read the code.
There are 20 amino acids in the body. The cell uses a code of
three bases for each amino acid, these groups of three bases are
called codons. There are also start and stop signals.
To see translation:
Start translation video..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbB2kMkmb0w
Your physical appearance is called a phenotype.
This comes from the chromosomes you get from both of your
parents. The half you get from each parent is called gametes
To see how gametes are created, see videos over meiosis and
mitosis.
Video about mitosis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlN7K19QB0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlN7K1-9QB0
Video about meiosis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1_-mQS_FZ0
Genes can help prevent certain diseases. It also helps
animals adapt and allows us to manipulate the way they
look
Veterinarians can use this genetic information to understand
what causes animals to get sick. Vaccines are used to trick the
body into thinking that it has been infected with a disease and
the immune system can figure out a plan to get rid of the
disease, if the animal really does become infected.
Let’s play!!
The genes that gives cows horns are recessive (weaker)
The genes that give cows no horned is dominant
(stronger)
If these two cows have a calf, will it have horns or not??
Did you guess right???
Sometimes genes can have mutations. This can either allow the
animal to adapt to a certain environment, or cause deformity.
The genetic mutation that gives a basset
hound it’s short legs and long body is the
same mutation that creates little people.