Page 1 - Demo

PROJECT 3: part 1 Looking at cheek cells & making your first semi-permanent slide HOW HARD TO DO = 5/10 Required: Fructose sugar (also called %u2018Fruit Sugar%u2019), slides, coverslips, tweezers, small jar, paintbrush, pva glue, nail varnish, enamel paint, Iodine or Methylene blue, small labels, a cotton bud, a saucer. Optional: plant hairs, pollen, spores. DNA, Genes, Your Code and You. In computers, code exists as electric charges in super-microscopic switches arranged in blocks. A memory card or USB memory stick can contain billons or trillions of switches. A computer program o r phone App . i s an arrangement of instructions coded onto these switches. Living things store code in their cells as an instruction set (program) on how to replicate the cell. All cells in your body die off after a certain period, but before they do, they are replaced by the old cell p roducing a new one . Instructions on how to do this a r e c o d e d o n t o a n arrangement on a molecule composed of two chains that coil around each other to form a double helix [A]. This code is r e s p o n s i b l e f o r t h e development, functioning, growth and reproduction of all known organisms and many viruses. DNA and ribonucleic acid (RNA) are nucleic acids, alongside proteins, li pi d s a n d c om pl e x c a r b o h y d r a t e s (polysaccharides). Nucleic acids are one of the four major types of macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life. DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid. Codes in the genes can be patterns inherited from your parents and can be used to see if you might be susceptible to specific biological conditions (like eye or hair colour) or biological weakness like a weak heart. Your genetic make-up can be determined from just a single cell. Often, people take a swab of their cheek cells, which are easily and painlessly detached from inside their mouths, and sent off to companies that send back reports about ancestral history or signs of biological weaknesses. You are going to look at one of your c heek ce l l s u nder t he microscope%u2014a cell containing your genetic make-up. You won%u2019t see genes though, just a bit of you. Code can be constructed in lots of different ways. Our alphabet, for example, where the 26 letters can be used in many different arrangements to form words. Those words can be arranged to form whole sentences like a list of instructions. All of the genetic material in an organism is called The Genome. In humans, the genome contains more than three billion %u201cletters%u201d of DNA. The letters GATC stand for the nucleotide bases: guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine, which are read by the cell when genes are active. They are molecules. If you do not wish to learn more about genetic code, skip the text below! Putting a specimen on a slide and adding a drop of water plus coverslip is a good way for observing subjects under the microscope. But the water dries out, so you can%u2019t keep the slide to look at again. Here, we are going to explore how to make your own slides, which should enable you to look at them again and again for a few years. We need something to put on the slide and I thought, as we are looking at cells, we would use one of the cells from your own body. Excited? In fact, we are going to store all the information about you on that slide because just one of your cells contains all the coded information to build a completely new you. Your Genetic Code. We will use a common and risk-free liquid which you will make as a %u2018mountant%u2019 for the cells. This will suspend them in a solution and help keep them from deteriorating, as well as refracting light to increase contrast to show the transparent cells more readily. [A]- DNA%u2014Double Helix 16