Families are important to many animals, but are they also important to organisms made of just one cell? For amoebas, the ability to recognize relatives can make a world of difference.
Ben Pirotte
a region of DNA that instructs the cell on how to build protein(s). As a human, you usually get a set of instructions from your mom and another set from your dad... more
Ben Pirotte
This could bee - yes, bee - a key to our sweet tooth and possibly a way to learn more about diabetes.
Nicholas Baker
Did you ever think the search for the “fountain of youth” would end up inside of our very own cells? There are some scientists that have found that parts of our cells might hold the answer to aging and diseases like cancer.
Benjamin Katchman
Have you ever wondered what makes one animal different from another? Scientists conducted an experiment and found that food is one of the reasons chimpanzees and humans are so different.
Samantha Hauserman
Have you ever wondered how different animals are related? Marsupials like kangaroos live in Australia, but scientists think they may have traveled there from as far away as South America.
Sarah Ly
Scientists are finding out that even though dogs look very different on the outside, what causes them to look that way is much similar than we thought.
Emilio Galan
Chromosomes and Genes
Take a moment to consider how traits are passed from parent to offspring inside the cell. The information for the traits of an organism is stored in DNA, as genes on chromosomes. All living things have genes and chromosomes. Depending on the plant or animal, the size and number of chromosomes are different. Think of chromosomes as giant set of instructions for living things.
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Below is a list of phenotypes easily identified in humans that follow the pattern of Mendelian inheritance. Look at yourself in the mirror to see if you carry the dominant or recessive alleles for these traits.
Solving a Genetic Mystery
Sabine Deviche
The life and work of Gregor Mendel has some surprising pieces. Known as the father of genetics, his work was mostly unnoticed for 30 years after he published his famous paper. It is also possible this famous scientist suffered from test anxiety.
Also in: Türk
From the time of Aristotle, scientists have been arranging living things in order to study and understand them. The science of classifying living things is called taxonomy.
In a classification, a taxon is a group, and the smallest taxon is the species. Usually, only members of the same species can mate with each other and produce young—or seeds, in the case of plants. There are some exceptions to this rule, but often the young of mixed species cannot reproduce or do not survive well in the wild.