BIO: Intro to Genetics 1.1

Genetics

• Started as a field to study inheritance of traits

• people observed that like gave rise to like

• Something was passing from parent to offspring

What’s being passed on

• Information

• driving force of the universe- entropy; entropy wants us to fall apart

• It requires information and energy to assemble a complex organism

• Genetics is about storage, usage, and transmission of biological information

• Information decreases uncertainty in a system

• The more information you have the higher the quality of the information

Genes are

• Recipes

• Genes are biological information that is used to build a living organism

• Genes store information until it’s needed and can be passed on to the next generation just like recipes

• If the information in genes gets changed, uncertainty increases and quality decreases

Required information varies among tissue types

• Different information needed for muscle, kidney, or brain cells

• All cells have the same DNA content (aside from sperm and eggs cells) the difference comes from Gene Profile and their different functions

• Gene profiles: Different recipes

• Gene expression makes cell types different (Depends on when and to what degree they are expressed)

Required information varies overtime

• Development, maturation and aging all have differences in the specific genetic information being used

• The bad effects of aging: synesis; entropy is catching up

• Overtime you don’t have the same genes expressing at the same levels

Genetics as a tool

• Once we understood the general concepts, we begin to manipulate them to our advantage

• Artificial selection and breeding in agriculture, genetic engineering in biotech