Unit 5 Reflection

In this unit, "Walking the Dogma", we went more in depth about the structure of DNA and some of its jobs in copying itself as well as providing information for organism. We focused on how the nucleotides that make up DNA such as adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine are incorporated in the processes of DNA replication, protein synthesis, and gene regulation. Since I am a visual learner I was successful in grasping the concepts of DNA replication, protein synthesis, and gene regulation through diagrams and videos of these processes occurring.

<http://philschatz.com/anatomy-book/contents/m46073.html>

I am weaker in the RNA processing of eukaryotic gene regulation. I'm still not confident in the ideas of exons and introns and why its essential that introns are cut out of the sequence before it is read by the mRNA. Another idea that was difficult to wrap my head around was the idea of histons coiling around DNA and forming chromosomes. I became more confident with this concept, however, after watching a video of this happening. During this unit, I tried using my visual learning style to my advantage when we made a model of DNA and watched videos of the central dogma of biology. I realized that I really do remember information better when I use visual aids while I am first learning it. We learned about mutations occasionally occurring in protein synthesis, however, I still wonder why more mistakes are not made in this process. There are so many places for mistakes during transcription, the RNA traveling to the cytoplasm for translation, during translation, and the folding and producing of amino acids to make proteins. It is amazing to me that organisms preform with so few mistakes while doing such complex, multi-step processes.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_mutation>