tMoL: Genotype vs. Phenotype

It's the end of another term, time for me to move on again. I'll be going home soon to write about what's been going on, and there's a lot to say. The talks I did in schools went really well, although there's still stuff to improve on. This lab placement has been really great and I've been enjoying all the other projects I'm involved in. Next up is an unconference, SciBarCamb, which I strongly recommend to anyone reading this blog.

This is a peice I wrote for a friend of a friend, she's doing a course in genetics and was looking for clarification of the difference between genotype and phenotype, it was a bit of a rush job but hopefully it clarifies matters.

In order to live, grow and make more of themselves, cells need to have instructions. These are stored as DNA, which is mostly found in the cell nucleus. Each set of instructions is called a gene, each gene produces a particular protein. The full set of human DNA, the human genome, can make thousands of proteins and each protein performs a specific function within a cell.

Genes are specific DNA sequences (source)

 Different people have different versions of the same gene and hence of the same protein, this is what makes us genetically different. These different gene alleles have different effects within our body. As a simplified example; there is a protein which is responsible for hair colour. If it is functioning properly then you have brown hair. Some versions of the protein do not function properly so there is no colour made, this results in blonde hair. There are various other versions with intermediate effects resulting in all different hair colours. This is a slight simplification, as there are actually multiple proteins involved in hair colour, but it illustrates the principle.

tMoL: The Meanings of Life - Boxes, little boxes

I’m creating this section as a means for me to blog without having to put in too much effort. In each post I’m going to pick one of the many words and acronyms developed by academics to confuse everyone else, and explain it for everyone to understand, and provide you with a few useful little facts. The first few are going to be pretty easy, words that come up in the media all the time. Words that everyone has heard and probably knows the meaning of but not necessarily some of the more interesting bits.

Cell – I want to start with cells because they are an important part of my work, they are generally most active and undergo the most changes during development. They are also the basis for life and are generally the start point of most discussions of the evolution of life (although actually there was a lot of good stuff before that, which tends to get overlooked). Also I will be talking about them to local school children in a few months and hopefully this will help me to organise some of my ideas.