Genetics and Heredity

• Gregor Mendel


  he is the father of genetics
• Gregor Mendel 


  the first to study the science of heredity by analysing the patterns of inheritance, emphasized that genes retain permanent identities
• gene


  is a portion of DNA that determines a specific trait
• Allele


  a specific form of a gene
• genes


  responsible for the expression of traits
• alleles


  are responsible for the variations in which a given trait can be expressed
• Mendel's law of independent assortment


  it states that genes do not influence each other with regard to the sorting of alleles
• Mendel's law of independent assortment


  states that every possible combination of alleles for every gene is equally likely to occur
• the first x-ray image of DNA was taken in 1952 by Rosalind Franklin using a technique called X-ray crystallography
• The first x-ray image led to the discovery of the DNA structure by James Watson and Francis Crick
• Deoxyribonucleic Acid 


  made up of two chains of nucleotide pairs that encode the genetic information for all living things
• DNA structure


  two polynucleotide strands wrapped around each other in a double helix
• hydrogen bonds


  it holds the strands of DNA between bases
• Deoxyribonucleic Acid 


  encodes all genetic information and is the blueprint from which all biological life is created
• Transcription


  RNA converts the genetic information within the DNA
• Translation


  a format used to build a protein and then moves it to the ribosomal protein factories
• Ribonucleic Acid 


  it only has one strand and its strands are shorter than DNA
• DNA technology


  the manipulation of genetic material and is relatively a new branch of biotechnology
• Recombinant DNA


  the combination of nucleotide sequences from two different sources
• genetically modified organisms


  created through recombinant DNA techniques that carry artificial introduced genes
• transgenic organisms 


  one that carries artificially introduced genes
• human gene therapy


  this technique uses a virus that can be modified to include a normal gene that may cure the genetic disease
• sequencing


  automated machines can now sequence many thousands of DNA nucleotides per hour
• genomics


  advances in DNA sequencing ushers in this area, the study of complete genome sets
• genome mapping 


  the whole-genome shotgun method involves sequencing DNA fragments from an entire genome and then assembling the sequences
• the 24 different chromosomes of the human genome contains about 3 billion nucleotide pairs and 21000 genes
• genome


  complete set of genetic instructions made in DNA