Bailie Kroll- Science Methods

    Week 10- Natural Selection   Learning This Week: This week in lab we looked further into natural selection and how it shapes the ecosystems that we know today. Natural selection is the process by which certain traits become more or less common in a population over time. The outcome of this process is evolution, which is the permanent change of genetic makeup in a population. Natural selection is based on existing traits and the dominant traits of the ecosystem will succeed. Causes of natural selection include: mutation, adaptation, competition, chance events, and other environmental factors. Evolution on the other hand has multiple drivers such as: natural selection, genetic drift, migration, and mutation. Evidence that evolution has occurred can be found in fossils that show physical proof of the existence of animals that lived long ago which are now extinct. Another piece of evidence is certain parts of the human body that are no longer useful but can attribute to t...

     Week 8- DNA and Mutations   Learning This Week: This week we explored more into DNA and RNA, and why their structure matters. We also looked at our baby that we created in the Week 7 lab and observed the patterns in the way that genetic material is stored and transferred. The additional learning objective we added was about structural changes in genetic material when DNA mutations occur. The different types of mutations include: substitution, insertion and deletion. Substitution occurs when a base pair substitutes itself into the codon for another base pair. For example the A in TAC is substituted with T, so the codon changes to TTC. Insertion is when a base pair is inserted into the DNA strand so it completely changes the order of codons in the sequence. Such as, A inserts itself into CCG TAC GTG making it CCG TAA CGT G. Deletion is when one base pair is deleted from the sequence, again changing the codons. For example, A is deleted from the following sequence ...