Difference between revisions of "Class Journal Week 2"

Revision as of 17:29, 11 September 2015

Nicole Anguiano

1. What is the biggest discovery that I made from these readings?
   • The biggest discovery that I made from these readings was the existence of selenocysteine. Coded by UGA (typically only a termination codon in the majority of organisms), it is only differentiated from the typical termination codon by a hairpin loop in the mRNA. The fact that such a tiny difference in the structure of the codon makes such a dramatic difference was incredible to me, especially considering the fact that in the organisms with the selenocysteine, UGA also codes for a termination codon when it does not have the loop (Brown, pg 14).
2. What part of the readings did I understand the least?
   • Many of the details of Nirenbirg's experiments were very confusing to me. While I understood the overall purpose of the experiments and the results found from them, the exact details of the methods of the experiments were difficult for me to understand.
3. What is the relationship between the genetic code and a computer code?
   • The genetic code can be represented in binary, the language of computers. Each nucleotide can be mapped to a binary sequence (for example, A - 00, C - 01, G - 10, T - 11). With this mapping, the genetic code can be represented equivalently in binary. DNA can be considered like a large computer program that serves not only the purpose of storing data, but also running the functions that determine the actions that a particular cell will take, the proteins that will be created and relatively how much of them should be, and also regulates itself to determine which functions need to be run at any given time (Moody, pg 3).
   • Considering DNA as a program, it can be thought that the DNA is a program written in a higher level language. The RNA is what is created when the program is run - it is the assembly or machine code that is then processed by the computer. The proteins then are the results of the program, for example, an output on the screen or a change in a GUI (Moody, pg 4-5).

Nanguiano (talk) 11:29, 9 September 2015 (PDT)

Emily Simso

1. What was the biggest discovery that I made from these readings?
   • The biggest discovery for me was from the article "Ode to the Code" by Brian Hayes, specifically that the genetic code is so resilient to substitutions. I thought it was interesting that the experimenters arranged the amino acids according to their polar arrangement to judge whether the code dealt with permutations. It seemed incredible that the genetic code could do better than a million other random codes, showing nature's role in creating the code.
2. What part of the readings did I understand the least?
   • There were sections of the Nirenberg reading that were hard to follow, such as when he described the techniques he used to find mRNA "in vitro." While I feel that I understood the general points he made, the details were a little too complex, such as the relationship between C-labeled valine and mRNA. The graphs were somewhat helpful, but I feel like I don't have a full grasp on the experiments.
3. What is the relationship between the genetic code and a computer code?
   • I thought the Moody reading was helpful for this question. He states that genetic code and computer code are "completely equivalent," since a binary can be assigned to the four bases (4). Genetic code and computer code are also similar since they both allow for "programs" to run, which are dependent upon the exact order of the individual units (5). Both types of code allow for a variety of functions as well, but when a mistake occurs in the order of the code, the function either changes or does not run correctly.

Emilysimso (talk) 10:29, 11 September 2015 (PDT)