Thursday, January 17, 2008

Shirdi sai have you authored this book on genome?- Part III

I continued my speech in the afternoon session.
Almost everything in the body, from hair to hormones, is either made of proteins or made by them. Every protein is a translated gene. In particular, the body’s reaction is catalyzed by protein known as ENZYMES. Even the processing, photocopying, error correction and assembly of DNA and RNA molecules themselves- the replication and translation are done with the help of proteins, Proteins are also responsible for switching the genes on and off, by physically attaching themselves to PROMOTER and ENHANCER sequences near a start of the gene’s text. Different genes are switched of in different parts of the body
When genes are replicated, mistakes are sometimes made. A letter (base) is occasionally missed out or the wrong letter inserted. Whole sentences or paragraphs are sometimes duplicated, omitted or reversed.This is known as mutation. Many mutation are neither harmful or beneficial, for instance if they change one CODON to another that has the same amino acid ‘meaning’ there are 64 different CODONS and only twenty amino acids, so many DNA ‘words’ share the same meaning. Human beings accumulate about one hundred mutations per generation, which may not seem much given that there are more than a million CODONS in the human genome, but in the wrong place even a single one can be fatal.
All rules have exceptions(including this one) Not all human being genes are found on the 23 principal chromosomes, a few live inside the little blobs called mitochondria, and probably done so ever since the mitochondria were free living bacteria. Not all genes are made of DNA some viruses use RNA instead, Not all genes are recipe fro protein. Some genes are transcribed into RNA but not translated to protein; the RNA goes directly to work instead either part of a ribosome or as transfer RNA. Not all reactions are catalyzed by protein a few are catalyzed by RNA instead. Not every protein comes from a single gene; but some are put together from several recipes. Not all the 64 letter codon specify an amino acid: Three specify STOP commands instead and finally not all DNA spells out genes. Most of it is a jumble of repetitive or random sequences that is rarely or never transcribed: so called the junk DNA. With these basics the tour of the human genome can begin.....

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