what did Martha Chase have to say about heredtiary factors and genetics?
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Who cares? You just gave me enough points to reach Level 5! Wahoo!
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The laws of inheritance were derived by Gregor Mendel, a 19th century Austrian monk, who was conducting plant hybridity experiments. Between 1856 and 1863, he cultivated and tested some 28,000 pea plants. His experiments brought forth two generalizations which later became known as Mendel's Laws of Heredity or Mendelian inheritance. These are described in his paper "Experiments on Plant Hybridization" that was read to the Natural History Society of Brno on February 8 and March 8, 1865, and was published in 1866.
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There's a new quasi-scientific theory being bandied about called "memetics."  Although the idea is still in its infancy, it has some interesting potential.  The idea stems from the notion of evolution from a gene's perspective--that an individual gene has no "concern" for the organism that propagates it; rather, if it happens to flourish it will become abundant.  If, by chance, it should convey an advantage to its host such that its host becomes more prosperous and abundant, then so much the better; but that isn't expressly a requirement.  The notion emerges to help explain things like viruses, and genes that are advantageous in a the heterozygous creature but detrimental to the homozygous creature (like the gene for sickle cell anemia--the disease results from being homozygous--that is, havving two copies--of the gene, while being heterozygous--having one copy--can convey a resistance to malaria).\n\nThat much we know.  But when looking from this reductionist perspective, we find that there are three essential elements to evolution: replication with retention of traits, variation, and selection.  With those three factors combined, any system will necessarily result in an evolutionary pattern.\n\nHere's where the idea of memes come in.  Memes are behaviors or behavioral patterns that can be copied by one person from another.  From the memetics standpoint, this tendency to instinctively copy behaviors is THE defining trait of the human.  As babies, we copy facial expressions and phonemes (phonemes are the building blocks of sound in a given language), we copy grammar, we copy tool making and usage, etc.  Synchronized/choreographed dance is a good example of a behavior unique to humans existing in all cultures and centered around mimicry.  At any rate, these behaviors that we might copy--be they languages, tool, stereotyped motions, religion, philosophy, whatever--are collectively called memes.\n\nWhile there hasn't yet been a rigorously scientific theory developed, there are certain elements that many biologists can agree upon.  Human evolution is dominated by a form of meme-gene co-evolutionary process.  The core idea that reults is this: while a meme might be detrimental to an individual, and hence reduce the chances of an individual progenating and passing genes to a next generation, if can simultaneously be beneficial to a group that propagates that meme.  Hence, it will be evolutionarily favored.\n\nAs an example, let's look at self-sacrifice in a battle.  An individual who sacrifices his life for a "greater good" will reduce his own chances of reproducing.  At first glance, we should regard this as evolutionarily detrimental, and hence, something that should be eliminated by evolution.  But in the broader perspective, a nation or culture that places a premium on courage and the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater good will thrive in an armed conflict, since the people will work better as a unified and courageous fighting force.  The benefits to the community as a whole are evolutionarily out-weighed by the few losses of those who sacrifice their lives--hence, the community sharing and promoting that meme thrives.  Those who are evolutionarily best suited to adopt, promote, and maintain memes become some of the most prosperous in a society unified by memes.  Things like IQ would correlate well with the ability to adapt memes.  In the long run, the genepool would select towards the ability to acquire and propagate useful memes, or even to innovate new memes.\n\nThe lesson of the last several thousand years has been that those with the best memes win.  Those memes include things like math and science as well as religion.  Becoming religious would carry a small risk of finding yourself in a position to be sacrificed in the name of your God or gods, but it would carry the certain benefit of having the protection of the entire religious community.  During the Da
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do you have a link to that study? sounds interesting but i'm not familiar with it.
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You will need to do some reading yourself.   I will give you some examples, for you to look up.\n\nExamples of Risk factors (AFAIK):\n\na)cardiovascular disease: having certain genes for apolipoproteins eg apoE4 IIRC, or smoking/ no exercise, obesity, anxiety.\n\nb)diabetes: having the gene that predisposes you to type 1 DM if / when you catch a certain virus, and then catching that virus ... or not. Having the gene that predisposes you to type 2 DM, and then not controlling bodyweight, not exercising, not having a healthy diet.\n\nc)cancer: having a gene that predisposes you to tumours eg I have Gorlin Syndrome, and then exposing yourself to carcinogens eg Xrays, UV, etc... or not.  I have few tumours (for a Gorlin person), but would have many more if I went out in the sun without protecting my skin.  For that matter, dark - skinned Gorlin people have far fewer skin cancers than us whiteys.\n\nd)asthma: I am not sure if there are genes that predispose the immune system to respond that way, eg by making immunoglobulin class E instead of other classes.  There is a theory that growing up in a house that is "too hygienic" adds risk; exposure to pets, dirt and other kids reduces risk (they say).  Yet atopy runs in families, too.\n\nAll these things are combinations of "Nature" and "Nurture", as the effects have been called, historically.
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This is an ongoing debate in Science at the moment! When genetics was first discovered, one of the first things that was first asked was: "does our emotion come DNA".\n\nUnfortuntly, there are still no answers. Certain scientists have found that those people that have violent/anger tendancies often have the same gene somewhere in their chromosomes. However, this is not what makes you violet - and so far they can only suggest that it increases the chances of making you more suseptible to anger/violence. Other scientific studies have been inconclusive!\n\nMany people still believe in the "environmental" factor - The believe that your actions, your personality and the type of person you are is determined by your environment: Where you live, how you are were brought up etc.\n\nSo, the answer is: Nobody Knows!\n\nI hope that helps!\nTom
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Genetic predisposition.
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http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=16378\n\nYou need to read the book by Hamer- don't think you will find out enough without the book. Explicit biochem is rarely spelled out for the lay person in generic articles because people are too dumb to understand it.\n\n"\nHamer studied 2,000 DNA samples. He interviewed 2,000 people extensively (226 questions in each interview). The questions, among other things, looked at how spiritual a person is and what their level of faith in God is. \n\nHe found that the VMAT2 Gene was significantly more common among people who believed in a higher spiritual being. According to his research, whether or not your upbringing is religious has no bearing on how religious you turn out to be - but the presence of the VMAT2 Gene version does. "\n\nYou need to focus on this ASPECT in your paper, don't plagiarize. The details on mechanism of action of protein etc.. should be found in the book. Do not forget to cite the article link I pasted above.\n\nThe God Gene - How Faith is Hard Wired into our Genes is the book. Buy it fast if time is of the essence!
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While I personally think this stuff is hokum, here's one book on the subject:\n\nhttp://www.ronnastar.com/cordingley.html\n\nYou may also want to study the history of cranial and facial shape and personality as seized upon by scientists interested in eugenics:\n\nhttp://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v2/n10/pdf/embor304.pdf#search='cranial%20shape%20eugenics'\n\nEnjoy!
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Hi Meredith,\n\nExcellent topic. The keyword you are therefore looking for on the Internet is "eugenics", i.e.  the study of methods of improving genetic qualities by selective breeding. (Remember the name of one of the protagonists in the movie : Eugene - rings a bell? )\n\nThere are a lot of articles on that topic according to google. Try this one for example: http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol4no1/toq-editnote4-1.html \n\nGood luck !
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Mendel's First Law of Genetics (Law of Segregation)\n\nGenetic analysis predates Gregor Mendel, but Mendel's laws form the theoretical basis of our understanding of the genetics of inheritance.\n\nMendel made two innovations to the science of genetics:\n\n\n\ndeveloped pure lines\ncounted his results and kept statistical notes\nPure Line - a population that breeds true for a particular trait [this was an important innovation because any non-pure (segregating) generation would and did confuse the results of genetic experiments]
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Well the BBC tells us, in the UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing human DNA with cow eggs.   That's interesting.\n   National Public Radio has an interesting article on the value of pomegranates, in which I learned new data.  NPR's All Things Considered program had an article called "Does Red Wine Fuel the Fountain of Youth?"  regarding testing wine consumption on mice.\n  The way sunshine changes human's lives is a subject newsworthy as well as well documented.  SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) affects a huge population and is especially newsworthy now due to the change from daylight savings time.  I've attached a link from the National Mental Health Association, but a dogpile.com search brought up lots of credible sources.  Good luck - if you have internet or library access you have the path to a paper with "Excellent" written in red across the top!
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That is one of the big debates in the area.   Seems to me that the human race needs to develop immunities on its own...we cant tamper with that.   People are alread thinking about being able to choose their child gender, hight, weight, strength, intelligence, hair and eye color.   I don't want that...I dont' see how any reasonable person could.\n\nI don't want to take the risk that changing the genetic structure caoul have catastrphic results later on, like the need of an ontibody that doesn't exist becase the disease has been mutated by being inside of a genetically modified person.   When we are bor we already have enough things that are forced upon us...we don't need more....
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It actually seems that a predisposition to believe in god may exist on a genetic level. This idea has been popularized by Dean Hamer, a bigwig at the National Cancer Institute.\n\nI haven't yet read the book, but I'm very curious as I seem to lack whatever genetic component this is.\n\nI certainly can't accept this as proof of a deity, but I'd like to know more about it.
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1. All organisms tend to produce more offspring than can possibly survive (Darwin's generation gave this principle the lovely name of "superfecundity").\n\n2. Offspring vary among themselves, and are not carbon copies of an immutable type.\n\n3. At least some of this variation is passed down by inheritance to future generations. (Darwin did not know the mechanism of heredity, for Mendel's principles did not gain acceptance until early in our century. However, this third fact requires no knowledge of how heredity works, but only an acknowledgment that heredity exists. And mere existence is undeniable folk wisdom. We know that black folks have black kids; white folks, white kids; tall parents tend to have tall children; and so on.)\n\nThe principle of natural selection then emerges as a necessary inference from these facts:\n\n4. If many offspring must die (for not all can be accommodated in nature's limited ecology), and individuals in all species vary among themselves, then on average (as a statistical statement, and not in every case), survivors will tend to be those individuals with variations that are fortuitously best suited to changing local environments. Since heredity exists, the offspring of survivors will tend to resemble their successful parents. The accumulation of these favorable variants through time will produce evolutionary change. \n\nhttp://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/origins/selection/fullhouse.html
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I don't like your teacher.  I think he/she is looking for B. genes, but then he/she should not have put chromosomes as an alternative choice.  Mendel's theory of independent assortment was only true because the genes he studied were on separate chromosomes.  It could be argued that what he was actually studying was chromosomal inheritance.
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The first person I thought of was Gregor Mendel, but everyone already pretty much knew that plants were alive already, he just showed that they have genetics.