Monday, March 5, 2012

DNA!



 

       Hey so what are we going to talk about today? Well today we will be talking about DNA! :D hehehe it sorta rhymed! 



       Like I said in the intro today we are talking about DNA. What is DNA? (I don't know) Well you are lucky because my teacher taught me so I can teacher you about it. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the hereditary material in your cells, in other words the material in your cells that makes you, you. Most DNA is located in the nucleus of the cell. In DNA, there are 4 bases, adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. Adenine and thymine pair up, guanine and cytosine pair up. 
       


Now we are going to talk about some very important people to science. First person is Rosalind Franklin. She was a biophysicist, who really researched DNA and found out more things about it. She understood how genetic info passed from parents to children. Oh whoops I forgot to tell you what time she lived in. Well, Rosalind was born in 1920. 






        Next person is Maurice Wilkins, he was a physicist and molecular biologist. He worked with our next two people, James Watson (hey Emma Watson! I don't think they are related but I love her :D ) and Francis Crick and Rosalind. These people won the 1962 Nobel Prize for  Physiology or Medicine. They won this because of their discoveries on molecular structure and DNA. So that raps up our important biologists for today. 




  
       Well you now know that you are made of both of your parents genes or DNA. We know how cells divide to replicate but how does DNA replicate. Well, during Interphase of cell division, when everything is replicating the DNA breaks apart and the base pairs are broken. 


      The first step to this long process is separating the 2 strands of base pairs. The strands form shapes looking like forks. Next, the base pairs bind to the new strands. Finally, they try to repair any problems in the DNA. 



   


          Now we are going to talk about junk DNA.What is junk DNA? Well only 2% of your DNA is different and the other 98% is unknown.... oohhh spooky






Now we are going to talk about RNA and DNA. (what is RNA?) Well, RNA or in the long scientific way, ribonucleic acid is an important type of molecule. It is usually forgotten and most people only know about DNA. We know that DNA is double stranded but RNA is usually single-stranded and can be in several shapes. Also, RNA has ribose, while DNA has deoxyribose. DNA has thymine as one of its bases out of the four but RNA has uracil instead.   










Thanks so much for reading! Hope you liked it ;D 
But I couldn't leave you without links ;)