Investigating diversity

• How is standard deviation more useful than a mean?

  - It gives you the spread of data (variance) around the mean\

  - Overlaps in standard deviation indicate no significant difference in the means.
• How do you make sure your sampling is representative of the population?

  - take a large sample (at least 30)

  - randomly sample to avoid bias
• How can you measure genetic diversity?


  - by comparing the base sequence of DNA, mRNA and the amino acid sequence of the proteins
• Compare the DNA in chloroplast/ mitochondria to prokaryotic DNA


  - the DNA is similar to prokaryotic DNA, in that it is:

  - short

  - circular

  - not histone bound
• How does transcription differ between prokaryotes and eukaryotes?


  - Transcription in prokaryotic organisms results in mRNA that requires no modification

  - because prokaryotic DNA does not contain any introns

  - eukaryotic transcription results in pre-mRNA that needs introns remove
• What is the role of ribosomes in translation?

  - it holds two tRNA molecules

  - to enable peptide bonds to form between the amino acids
• What is the role of tRNA in translation?


  - it carries a specific amino acid

  - anticodons align opposite complementary codons on the mRNA
• Gene mutations


  - a change in the base sequence of DNA

  - substitution or deletion
• When in the cell cycle do gene mutations occur?


  - interphase (s phase)

  - this is when DNA is replicated