Answers for Article "From Atoms to Traits"

1.  Explain the significance of Mendel. 

  Mendel’s experiments on crossbreeding peas changed the general view in his period on heritable variations from ephemeral and random mixing to traits passed from one generation to another, even though the traits may not be visible.

2. Draw the structure of DNA and who discovered this structure. 

  James D. Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure (drawing above)

3. Explain each of the five examples of variations that occur to DNA and give an example of each.

 1) Point Mutation: The substitution of a single base pair. 

Example: A slender silhouette and a hulking animal

 2) Insertion: The addition of extra base pairs in the sequence

Example: A smooth pea and a wrinkled pea

 3) Gene Copy Number: Difference in the number of duplication of an entire sequence
Example: the genes for starch digestion in chimpanzees and humans

 4) Duplication: Difference in the number of duplication of a base pair
Example: Signal receptor for pigment cells in pigs

 5) Regulatory changes: the change in the formation of gene sequences during the organism's development
Example: the difference in traits of the bushy teosinte and the tall modern cornstalk

4. What is evo-devo? 

  Evo-devo is the abbreviation of Evolutionary development biology. It is a field of biology that compares the developmental processes of different organism to determine the ancestral relationship between them, and to discover how the processes are influenced by evolutionary forces. 

5. Make a connection between human migration and the mutation of lactose intolerance.
  If a person comes from a population that stop consuming lactose products after infancy, and he goes to a region where the people consume lactose through adulthood, he will be lactose intolerant since his body lacks the mutant form of lactase enzyme that continues to be active in adulthood.