Bio Project: Genetic Drift

This is a Biology project on the Topic on Genetic Drift. Hence why I'm GeneticDrifter. In the article it talks about Enamel and how humans get it thick. Made by: Lilly Shockey :D

[geneticdrifter]

This shows Genetic Drift because it has a population of bugs but in the second picture a person steps on them and it randomly changes the population by force.

[geneticdrifter]

Hmmm?

1) Why do vegetarian organisms have thinner enamel than meat eaters? Is it because meat toughens the enamel?

2) How would sequencing the genes give them the results on how humans have thick enamel?

[geneticdrifter]

Opinion

My opinion on this article was that it wasn't really bias. It was more informational, talking about what the researchers did to get to the point they are right now. It also had a lot of important quotes talking about what was going on in the research.

[geneticdrifter]

New or Revolutionary

The reason this article has new information because it's a topic most people wouldn't think about doing. They wanted to be different and teach people a new topic to learn new things.

[geneticdrifter]

Connection

This article connects with some things we learned by talking about Genomes, genes and some things about evolution.

[geneticdrifter]

Conclusion

The team used the ideal of genetic drift to come to their conclusion. It occurs when changes in the DNA sequence joins together at a fast rate. It suggested that the genes are under positive selection.

[geneticdrifter]

Evidence

The research is fairly new, about a week old and they haven't made an answer to the question yet. However the team took the DNA sequence codes and put it through a computer to learn things on how to compare the data groups.

[geneticdrifter]

Question

The researchers want to know:

Why do Humans have such thick enamel?

[geneticdrifter]

Summary!

In my article, researchers from Duke University wanted to know why humans had such thick enamel so they took the human genome and and compared it with 5 other primates to see how we get it. If you don't know what enamel is, the article says it is a strong indicator of diet and vegetarian species tend to have a thinner/or weaker one compare to organisms who eat meat. Author Christine Wall said that teeth preserve their growth bands and since we understand fossils, teeth can tell how old things are when they die and people can compare living and extinct organisms together. The team looked at 4 gens that had codes for a protein involved in tooth formation.

4 Genes: Enamelysin, Amelogenin, Ameloblastin, and Enamelin.

The researchers sequenced the genes and fed the information into a computer to look at how base pairs changed between species

"That's when we know a gene is under positive selection,"  author Julie Horvath, director of the genomics and microbiology lab, says.

[geneticdrifter]

Definition of Genetic Drift

"variation in the relative frequency of different genotypes in a small population, owing to the chance disappearance of particular genes as individuals die or do not reproduce."

The definition that comes from Dictionary.com

[geneticdrifter]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YgUV9XTA9Rk/UVHhe4vJA-I/AAAAAAAAEyg/RPL3sjMQb0k/s1600/scala-naturae-robots.png

This is the article where I used to find info on my project! :)