Genes and Inheritance

Recap

• What is evolution?

  • Change is biology of traits, descent with modification

• What is natural selection?

  • A mechanism of evolution, identified and popularized by Darwin
  • Involves differential survival and, more importantly, reproduction of individuals because of differences in that organism's form
  • By form, we mean the characteristics of an organism which interact with the environment (a phenotype)

• Peppered moth

  • Moths changed to adapt to environment

• Mendel really figured shit out

  • Understood that genes could jump generations
  • Thinks information is passed via two mechanisms
    • Inheritance
    • Internal nature (that can't be seen)
  • Found very regular patterns when studying the peas
  • First to demonstrate that there is more to this evolutionary story than merely the blending of characteristics

DNA

• Basic stuff of biological life
• Makes stuff
• Caries information
• String of pattern nucleotide + strings which form a GENE
  • Kind of like a computer code
• Genes code for particular protein
• 20,000-25,000 genes, but that's only 3% of our DNA
• Humans body cells have 46 chromosomes or 23 pairs
• DNA lives in the cells
• Mendel was right that there was some internal nature (DNA) that has an affect on our traits

Genetype vs. Phenotype

• Genotype: full hereditary informaiton