UNIT+3-+NUCLEIC+ACIDS

= Nucleic Acids =



Unit 3 is all about nucleic acids. It shows how genes workd, what they are made of, and their importance to people. DNA and RNA are explained through descriptions of their structures and images of them. DNA replication is shown and explained. Types of RNA are listed, as people find out there is more to their genes than they thought. Protein Synthesis is explained as well as transcription and translation. DNA mutations and the causes and effects of them become more clear. This unit is very important because it helps us understand how our body works and what the make up of our body's directions is.

Vocab:
 * 1) Central dogma -Movement of nucleic acid-based information about cells is classically considered to be contrained
 * 2) Codon -Amino acid coding sequence of three nucleotides
 * 3) Deletion -mutations in which a section of dna is lost, or deleted
 * 4) Frameshift -when inertions and deletions alter a gene so that the message is not correctly parsed
 * 5) Insertion -mutations in which extra base pairs are inserted in to a new place in the DNA
 * 6) Gene expression -The synthesis of a final product (such as a protein or rRNA or tRNA) initially templated from a gene
 * 7) Gene product -A //gene product// is literally, the product of a gene though more precisely the final, in some way useful product of a gene
 * 8) Intron -Reading frame intervening sequences
 * 9) mRNA -Messsenger RNA
 * 10) Replication -When all of an organism's DNA is copied. For humans, that means copying around 3 billion base pairs each time the DNA in a cell is replicated. Because faithful DNA replication is so important, organisms have a number of ways to ensure replication accuracy.
 * 11) Ribosome -protein builders or the protein synthesizers of the cell
 * 12) RNA polymerase - an enzyme that produces RNA
 * 13) Reading frame -decides when to start and stop translation
 * 14) rRNA -ribosomal RNA
 * 15) Stop codon -they stop polypeptide synthesis
 * 16) Substitution -A substitution is a mutation that exchanges one base for another (i.e., a change in a single "chemical letter" such as switching an A to a G).
 * 17) Transcription -process of creating a complementary RNA copy of a sequence of DNA
 * 18) Translation -the information in RNA is used to create a protein
 * 19) tRNA -transfer RNA

Works Cited:

mysciencebox.org

brooklyn.cuny.edu

library.thinkquest.org

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http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/mutations_05