Class Journal Week 2

Lena Hunt

• What is the biggest discovery that I made from these readings?

The biggest discovery I made from these readings came from the Hayes article. I thought that it would make sense that because DNA has to fit into the nucleus of a cell that it would have to be very information dense, but learning that DNA actually has extra nucleotides to buffer the effect of mutation and mistranslations was a revelation. I knew about introns and exons, but before now I didn't understand why introns existed.

• What part of the readings did I understand the least?

I didn't particularly understand the Nirenberg article. He referred to a lot of organic chemicals that I was unfamiliar with, and the pace of the writing left me glassy-eyed. I think that if I was more familiar with the types of tests he was performing that I would have been more engaged.

• How was the genetic code solved experimentally?

Nirenberg sythesized mRNA and observed which amino acids resulted from a given input.

• What is the relationship between the genetic code and a computer code?

DNA encodes "lines of programming," a message composed of nucleotides that needs to be "run." A section of DNA in transcribed, just as computers transcribe sections of a program on a disk. In both computers and cells, the transcribed pieces are sent to different parts of the system. In cells, mRNA is translated into amino acids which become proteins, while in computers digital data is translated into analog output.

Lena (talk) 23:00, 3 September 2013 (PDT)

Kevin McGee

1. What is the biggest discovery that I made from these readings?

• I thought it was extremely interesting how Moody compared computer hackers to Nirenberg’s experiment. He would construct his own mRNA codons and watch what amino acids they would make as he imputed them. This is similar to computer hackers, who learn about knew computer systems by imputing information and watch what happens.

1. What part of the readings did I understand the least?

• I found the Nirenberg article to be very confusing. It was very heavy in its science and involved many procedures and language that I was unfamiliar with. I was able to grasp the big picture of the article, but I had trouble following the details

1. How was the genetic code solved experimentally?

• Nirenberg synthesized all 64 RNA codons, and looked at what amino acids were given from the codons.

1. What is the relationship between the genetic code and a computer code?

• The genetic code holds an extremely large amount of information and it is encoded through 4 nucleotides. A computer code tells a computer a large amount of information through the use of 2 numbers, 1’s and 0’s. The nucleotides tell the code for the cells, and the numbers tell the code for computer commands.

Kevinmcgee (talk) 19:38, 4 September 2013 (PDT)