Unit 5 Reflection

One of the essential understandings of Unit 5 was our Genetic Code: DNA = Deoxyribonucleic acid, its' Double Helix structure, the 3 parts of Nucleotides, how its' antiparallel, how the backbones run in opposite 5' to 3" directions from each other, the Nitrogen Bases and its' two types (Double rings: purines, Single rings: pyrimidines), the Base Pair Rules ("A" goes with "T", "G" goes with "C"), and its' function, which is a place of information for proteins. Another essential understanding was about how DNA is a copy machine: Semi-conservative Replication, which is the process of creating two identical strands of DNA from one strand, each resulting strand ending up with half of the original strand. "Walking the Dogma" was also a essential understanding in Unit 5. We learned about the structural differences between DNA and RNA, the functions of RNA (serves as temporary copy of a gene, delivers the copy to the ribosomes, and ribosomes using RNA to make proteins), Transcription (process where RNA Polymerase reads and copies the DNA code for a protein as mRNA copy) and Translation, which results in a protein. We also learned about Mutations, changes in the DNA code, Mutagon, anything that causes a mutation, point mutations, a change in 1 or 2 base pairs of DNA, when it's less and more harmful, the two type of point mutations, substitution and frameshift mutation, gene expression (process of a gene being used to produce a gene product or phenotype), and gene regulation (mechanism used by cells to increase or decrease the expression of a gene).

In this unit, my strengths were the Base Pair Rules and Transcription and Translation. I also believe that mutations were another strength of mine. For me, these topics were easy to understand and very interesting, I enjoyed going through the process of learning about these topics. I guess it was easy for me to understand them because I found them interesting, which made me eager to learn about them. I was very surprised by the fact that in this unit, I had few weaknesses. I still don't fully understand the whole antiparallel direction that our DNA goes in and memorizing the structural differences between DNA and RNA will definitely be hard for me. From these experiences, I didn't learn any new skills but I did learn a lot more about us human beings and what goes on inside us so yes I do believe that I'm a better student today than yesterday. I would like to learn more about our brain and how our emotions work. I don't have any unanswered questions about the topic that we've done but I really would like to learn about us mentally. I tend to wonder about what goes on inside our bodies that make us feel the certain emotions we feel and I think it would be interesting to learn about that. Last unit I took the Vark Questionnaire and since visual learning was supposedly one of my strong points, I decided to search up pictures that show the process of Transcription and Translation, since at first I was a bit confused about the processes. Once I had studied the drawings, the processes became a lot more clear and understandable for me, to the point where it became one of my strengths in this unit. I would say it went pretty well and that in the next unit, I'll definitely be doing more of that.