The two animations you've viewed in this lesson have provided some information about the genome, which is life's instruction manual, and DNA, which serves as the manual's alphabet. Now it's time to learn more about the parts of the manual that actually provide instructions: Genes.
Genes provide that information in chunks that have a beginning and an end, much like a sentence. Watch this animation to find out what those sentences say. Stop the video at any time, watch it again, or read the transcript. After you've finished viewing, answer the two questions at the bottom of the page in the notes box, below.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
In the organization of your instruction manual, genes play a huge part. Genes are stretches of DNA. They can be long or short, or somewhere in between, but all genes have a beginning, an end, and form a complete sentence, so to speak.
And what do those sentences say?
Genes are instructions on how to build proteins. Proteins are the physical worker bits that do all the heavy lifting in your cells--they are both the builders and the building blocks, the janitors, the operators, the emergency response team and much more. Bottom line, they are super important.
Beyond building blocks, genes also contain the instruction on when, how, and how much of a protein to make.
Different creatures have different genes, of course, but lots of our genes are similar. You and a chicken have similar basic structures. Similar organs made out of similar tissue made out of similar cells made out of similar proteins. In fact, you and a chicken are 60% identical, genetically speakiing. And when it comes to the genetic code of humans, we are all more than 99% identical. So even though we may look different, the code that we are built with, our genes, are more similar than they may seem.
Type out your responses to the following prompts in the text box below.
1) List three things genes do in cells.
2) List three things proteins do in cells.