Hello everyone! In this blog post, I will be sharing what I have learned in Science so far.
Inside a living thing, you will find billions of cells. Inside these cells, there are nucleus that carry chromosomes. These chromosomes are made up of the DNA. DNA strands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid, it carries information about us that makes us our own person. Every person is unique because we all have different DNA’s. Our genes make us unique or different from each other because they are the section of DNA that carries a specific trait that we have such as hair colour or eye colour. Our genes have different versions. These versions are called the alleles. For example, you can either have blue eyes or brown eyes because your parents have each of them. When you get a specific trait from your parents, it means that you inherited this from them. This is why you might have curly hair like your dad but your sibling has straight hair like your mum. There is a way you can predict what trait that you have will your child inherit; it is called punnett squares. There are two types of traits that you will write on your punnett square; a big/capital letter if the trait is dominant which means it is more common, and a small letter if the trait is recessive of more uncommon. To fill up a punnett square, you write the allele of one person on the top and one on the sides. Then, you bring these alleles down or across from where they were originally from. If most of the outcome has a big letter in it, it means that the child will have the dominant trait. The child will have a recessive trait only when most of the outcome is two small letters. For example, if the outcome is (BB,Bb,Bb,bb) the child will have whatever trait the big letter is. But if the outcome is (bb,bb,bb,Bb) the child will have whatever the recessive trait is.
Our trait can be one of the main reasons why we survive in the environment we’re in. A trait is something specific about us, it can be our hair colour, eye colour, or skin colour. Animals survive well in their environment because they are well-suited to their surroundings. This is called Natural Selection. It is when nature decides which species of animals will survive. For example, polar bears have white fur because they live in snowy areas, this helps them comoflauge with the snow to hide from predators. This leads to them surviving longer, because they can successfully hide from predators that want to eat them. And when a species survives for a long time and does not get caught by predators, they will reproduce and create future generations. However, a specie of animal might change after millions of times. It can either be through their looks, or traits. This long process is called evolution. Evolution is when an animal changes because of their environment or it can be a change up in their DNAs that will be passed on to their offspring. An example of this is Kiwi, a native flightless bird in New Zealand. Since New Zealand was far away from other countries and is surrounded by the ocean, there weren’t really big land predators in it. Due to this, Kiwi developed a trait of not being able to fly. This is because they had no predators to run away from, and birds usually fly to get away from land predators. It is also a way for them to store energy as flight uses a lot of energy.
CRISPR or “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats” is a technology that allows scientists to edit or replace the DNA of a living thing. It allows scientists to carefully cut and edit DNA sequences. It has benefits for humans as it can be used in treating diseases, improving crops, as well as for research. It can be used to correct generic information from disease that is inherited and infectious which makes it easier to look for and create potential cures and treatments. It is also used to make a better crop in resistance to pests, diseases, drought, and strong climates or environments. Lastly, it is used for researching cancer, developing better therapy or treatments, removing cancer cells, and restoring tumor-fighting genes. In conclusion, I think the use of CRISPR is acceptable as it is capable of gene insertion, deletion, and editing the base of a DNA and it offers a wide variety of benefits, including potential cures for cancer, a disease that scientists have been looking for a cure for almost 250 years.
Thank you for reading.