DNA
An introduction to DNA.
Short simple articles which explain the role of DNA, what it is and how it’s structure allows it to provide the blueprint for all life.
Nature nurture
Nature or nurture was the name given to an old debate around human personality. Essentially this debate was focused on whether our personality is mostly innate (determined by our DNA) or a product of our environment.
Nature and nurture
It is now widely accepted that both these factors play important parts in our make up. In fact they interact and feed back on to each other at many levels. Your DNA shapes the type of experiences you have and how you respond to them, which in turn shapes future experiences etc…
Identical twins
This point is most clearly illustrated if you know any identical twins. Identical twins have identical DNA because they actually came from the same sperm and egg which split in two. Do you know any identical twins? What similarities and what differences can you think of between the twins? The differences between them are due to the experiences they have had.
Identical twins are very useful for understanding which aspects of a person are affected by environment and which are determined by their DNA.
Photographer: MP. Copyright: GFDL
Plants
How is this relevant to plants? It is important to remember that although we will be talking about how DNA affects attributes of plants, so will the environment the plants are in. Understanding how DNA affects traits in different environments will be one of the many challenges the project will be trying to address.
