The last ten years including the present are exciting times in Biology. While you have been busy studying for school tests or hanging out with your friends, biologists have been hard at work. New discoveries are being made as you read this post and have changed a lot of what we thought we knew. This happens in science. We think we know how something works until our technology improves and then wow! We are getting new answers to old questions because we can see that we were wrong. This is part of the appeal to me of science that regularly we figure something out and it makes me feel very humble to be a part of this big world.
I learned about a new type of RNA a few summers ago summer called RNAi. It was discovered in the past 10 years and changes everything we thought about tumors and cancer. It has opened up a new branch of biology to study what happens above the genome called Epigenetics. From what we now know, there is a whole system that controls if your genes get expressed and by how much. Previously we thought that getting half of your genes from your mom and half from dad was the end of the story. Scientists are studying identical twins who have very different gene expression. For example two twin girls, one is totally normal and one at the age of one year , begins to show signs of autism. What caused the Autistic twin to be so different if their genome is identical? RNAi controls how those identical genes are expressed. How this RNAi works is a hot new area of biology today. None of this was known when I was in high school biology. So my message to you today is to keep an open mind. Prepare to be blown away as you learn about just how amazing living things are as we study biology together and watch for new discoveries being made right now this year. What do you want to know more about????? I have been expecting some comments - anyone out there?????????
I learned about a new type of RNA a few summers ago summer called RNAi. It was discovered in the past 10 years and changes everything we thought about tumors and cancer. It has opened up a new branch of biology to study what happens above the genome called Epigenetics. From what we now know, there is a whole system that controls if your genes get expressed and by how much. Previously we thought that getting half of your genes from your mom and half from dad was the end of the story. Scientists are studying identical twins who have very different gene expression. For example two twin girls, one is totally normal and one at the age of one year , begins to show signs of autism. What caused the Autistic twin to be so different if their genome is identical? RNAi controls how those identical genes are expressed. How this RNAi works is a hot new area of biology today. None of this was known when I was in high school biology. So my message to you today is to keep an open mind. Prepare to be blown away as you learn about just how amazing living things are as we study biology together and watch for new discoveries being made right now this year. What do you want to know more about????? I have been expecting some comments - anyone out there?????????
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