Essential Idea:
Every living organism inherits
a blueprint for life from its parents
Understandings:
- A gene is a heritable factor that consists of a length of DNA and influences a specific characteristic
- A gene occupies a specific position on a chromosome
- The various specific forms of a gene are alleles
- Alleles differ from each other by one or only a few bases
- New alleles are formed by mutation
- The genome is the whole of the genetic information of an organism
- The entire base sequence of human genes was sequenced in the Human Genome Project
Applications:
- The causes of sickle cell anaemia, including a base substitution mutation, a change to the base sequence of mRNA trancribed from it and a change to the sequence of a polypeptide in haemoglobin
- Comparison of the number of genes in humans with other species
Skills:
- Use of a database to determine differences in the base sequence of a gene in two species