DNA

1. Makelsii Simmons and Jacy Schneider DNA

2. What is DNA? • DNA is short for: Deoxyribonucleic acid • Deoxyribonucleic acid is what travels through living organisms. • Deoxyribonucleic acid travels through genetic genes and genetic make-up making generations of similar DNA (makes genes pass through). • DNA is what makes us, us! What we look like, how we sound, how our eyes are shaped, and how our hair is colored. EVERYTHING (more or less) about us come from our DNA.

3. How is DNA formed? • “Thirty-three independent mutant cell lines were selected in single steps for resistance to low concentrations of N-(phosphonacetyl)-L-aspartate and the structure of their amplified DNA was probed, using a set of recombinant phage and cosmids containing a total of 380 kb of amplified DNA. In all 33 cell lines, the selected CAD gene and at least 65 kb of flanking DNA were amplified, an average of 2.6-fold. Six other regions of DNA were co-amplified in all 33 mutants, but sometimes to a different extent than CAD. Novel joints, marking recombinations which link amplified regions to each other, were found surprisingly rarely. There were only three within the 380 kb of DNA sequence examined in the total of 33 cell lines. Each novel joint was present in only one copy per cell, was found in a different cell line and was homologous to a different probe. The low frequency of novel joints is consistent either with very large amplified regions in the single-step mutants, possibly 10,000 kb of co-amplified DNA for each copy of the CAD gene, or with a strong bias against recombination in the cloned sequences used as probes. Our previous finding that CAD probes hybridize in situ to unusually large chromosome arms in several single-step mutants is most consistent with the first possibility.” • DNA is formed from two strands of information that connect or break to complete us.

4. What does DNA do for us? • DNA is in the nucleus of each cell and it contains a long sequence of chemicals that determines how all the cells are built. It’s what determine us . • “DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid but unlike other acids it does not perform normal activities rather it has a very important and complex job in the human body. As most of us are aware human body is made up of cells. Or in other words cells are the building blocks of our body. It performs all the vital functions extremely important for our survival. Cells do not have a vacuum rather they have many different cellular bodies in them. One of them is the chromosome; it contains the genetic information of the body. Chromosomes have DNA, which is a molecule that has two strands containing genetic information. These strands are of nucleotide sequence and are bonded together by the hydrogen bond. They are also known as the spiral strands because they are twisted into a spiral staircase.”

5. History of DNA? • “RNA sequencing was one of the earliest forms of nucleotide sequencing. The major landmark of RNA sequencing is the sequence of the first complete gene and the complete genome of Bacteriophage MS2, identified and published by Walter Fiers and his coworkers at the University of Ghent (Ghent, Belgium), between 1972and 1976.” • “Prior to the development of rapid DNA sequencing methods in the early 1970s by Frederick Sanger at the University of Cambridge, in England and Walter Gilbert and Allan Maxam at Harvard,a number of laborious methods were used. For instance, in 1973, Gilbert and Maxam reported the sequence of 24 basepairs using a method known as wandering-spot analysis.” • This man who found DNA was obviously really smart, and willing to find why we look the way we do/sound the way we do.

6. DNA repair? • “DNA repair refers to a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors such as UV light and radiation can cause DNA damage, resulting in as many as 1 million individual molecular lesions per cell per day.Many of these lesions cause structural damage to the DNA molecule and can alter or eliminate the cell's ability to transcribe the gene that the affected DNA encodes. Other lesions induce potentially harmful mutations in the cell's genome, which affect the survival of its daughter cells after it undergoes mitosis. Consequently, the DNA repair process is constantly active as it responds to damage in the DNA structure. When normal repair processes fail, and when cellular apoptosis does not occur, irreparable DNA damage may occur, including double-strand breaks and DNA crosslink ages.”

7. DNA stages? • “Unwinding - DNA molecules consists of two individual strands of linked nucleotides coiled around each other in a double helix. Before any form of replication can occur, these two intertwined strands have to be separated. This is more difficult than it looks. Imagine two lengths of string twisted round and around each other in a double spiral. Hold each end of this twisted pair firmly and then ask someone to pull the individual pieces of string apart. It cannot be done.” • “Before the two strands of DNA can be separated, at least one of the strands must be snapped, or broken to relieve the thermodynamic strain and allow a point of rotation as the two halves of the DNA molecule are pulled apart. “ • Basically, DNA is made of two strands that link with each other go provide information about genes, diseases, etc about us. Within those two strands of information, are pieces of info. That determine what we look like, and what our children might look like, DNA is a BIG deal!

8. What does DNA help with? • Memory in gene transferring • It helps us in curing diseases, solving crimes, paternity tests, finding the relatedness of species, and much more. • DNA also helps determine paternity testing. (Ex: “Baby Mama” shows where the people are trying to determine who is the parents to a child).DNA also helps find criminals during crime scenes, many police officers and criminal investigators use a criminals and victims blood to identify. • DNA also helps people who need transplants or etc. Blood types in common.

9. DNA throughout evolution • Hypothetically, DNA was different back when dinosaurs and fish ruled the earth, because, supposedly, the earth was flat, so the dinosaurs had to be proportional to it, which makes it seem as if dinosaurs would have a different structure if the earth was round, like it is today; which would make dinosaur DNA differently shaped, colored, sized, and it would hold different information, consisting of different eye shapes, eye colors, skin textures, skin colors, add-on such as: tails, wings, spikes on their backs and head, and also camouflage. • Dinosaur parents carry chromosomes and each child (baby dinosaur) gets half from each parent, so the babies change from their parents, but still carry on a gene of them. So, eventually genes are disintegrated and new ones form, that’s why we look different from the way dinosaurs once looked.

10. DNA throughout evolution cont. • During some year in the 1400’s a man named Darwin traveled to the Galapagos Islands. As a young man boy Darwin was not the smartest cookie in the pickle jar. So as he grew up he began to study nature. As he became more interested in science he started to find new discoveries that no one in his time had come up with before. Once he arrived at the islands he found many creatures with bodies and legs and hearts that he had never seen before in his tiny brained life. And so he then began to study these creatures by riding on their backs and sitting with them in dirt. As time went on during his duration on the Galapagos he began to notice the same animals with different changes, even in the slightest ways. After awhile he began studying these creatures (with examples through different types of birds). He noticed that these birds were the same, they just came from different environments were they had evolved into there habitat. After awhile he wondered how these birds started from the same DNA gene. What had happened was all of these little brained pieces of corn flakes came from one giant corn flake and then divided up as they populated the bowl. –Example: As genes from one DNA chromosomes' split up and are given to each child/animal/creature . This helps these same species evolve to there environmental habitat area. So this is how DNA has changed through evolution and how it has been charted and discovered through different people/scientist freaks, according to Jacy and Makelsii.

11. Pictures of DNA

12. Cont...

13. Cited • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA • http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1167090/ • http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080901014254AAZ01S5 • http://www.whatdoesaparalegaldo.org/what-does-dna-do.html • http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secuenciaci%C3%B3n_de_ADN • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair • http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahp/LAD/C4/C4_StagesReplication.html

14. Cited cont... • http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_does_DNA_help_us