Many animals have been cloned including monkeys, but so far there have been no confirmed reports of human cloning. Should it be illegal? If not, under what circumstances should it be allowed?

Recent experiments (in the video in this week’s folder) claim that two babies have been born that were genetically engineered to resist HIV infection. Should this or any similar genetic modifications (which can be passed from generation to generation unlike standard gene therapy) be allowed for humans? Explain.

Watch the following video on GMO mosquitoes:

https://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/genetically-modified-mosquitoes

Should  these insects be allowed to be released in the wild? Why or why not?

Put your answer in the reply section for this post.

Watch the video below (It is long but well worth it)

When you are finished, answer the following questions in a reply to this blog post

(1) Was Rosalind Franklin “Robbed”?

(2) What “rights” do scientists have to their data? Do they “own” it?

(3) What do you think of Gosling’s statement at the end of the video about who was responsible for  Wilkins (and thus Watson and Crick) seeing the data?

(4) Did Rosalind Franklin “steal” Wilkins’ student (Raymond Gosling)?

(5) Do you think something like this would happen today? Have times changed?

(6) Were Watson and Crick too careless in their first model, or is this ( as some have suggested) just how science works, by trial and error? Was Franklin too cautious?

Here is a place to post questions about the class. You may post questions about the class organization and about specific topics. I will also post questions that get frequently asked.

Answers from other students are welcome!

Read the Mother Courage article and the DIY scientist articles.  What major ethical error did a doctor make in the first article? What do you attribute the difference in insight between this doctor and Jill Viles? You will get 2 points for answering this question. You will get 1 point if you comment on someone else’s answer (Give their name), but you must first make a comment before you can read and comment. Note that I must approve the first comment, so you won’t see your comments until after I approve them.

Write your answers as a reply in the comments section

Find an article about biotechnology and post the URL here with a short summary in your own words and why you found it interesting.

Some places to look are sciencedaily.com or

LCC research databases

(General onefile or omnifile are good places to start)

Note: this is a public site which means that it can be read outside of LCC. Please keep this in mind and use appropriate language.

Enter your submission as a reply to this post.

I have to approve all new users to this site, so the first time you use this, you will not see your article appear until after it is approved.

You can get up to 10 points extra credit for doing this. This can be valuable, especially if you did poorly on the last exam.

Note: The total number of extra credit points possible in this class is 25. Some people are close to 20 extra credit points. You can find the total in D2l.

When scientists first observed chromosomes in mitosis and meiosis, it was suggested that chromosomes were likely to carry the genetic material. Some direct evidence came from studying X linked genes in fruit flies: the traits (such as a trait for eye color) followed the X chromosome.  When researchers found genetic evidence for recombination, they wanted to see whether they could correlate physical crossing over on the chromosome withe genetic recombination.  In order to do, this scientists took advantage of some characteristics of corn chromosomes.

To understand their research it helps to review a few key corn traits

The colored trait is coded for by a dominant allele (C) and the recessive allele (c) gives yellow kernels

A second gene called Waxy effects the type of starch in the kernels.  Wx is a dominant allele that makes 2 kinds of starch (Amylose starch and amylopectin) while corn plants homozygous for the recessive allele (wx) make only amylopectin. The Wx gene and C gene are on chromosome 9 of corn.
Corn chromosomes can also have knobs, which are darkly staining regions at the end of chromosomes. However, for a given chromosome (such as chromosome 9) the knob may or may not be present and it acts like a genetic marker. In other words, a corn plant that has knobs on both chromosome 9s will pass this chromosome to all of its offspring. If such a plant is crossed to a strain that lacks the knob, then the offspring will be heterozygous for the knob trait.  Below is a picture of knobs in corn chromosomes. Chromosome Knobs are shown below:

the first critical experiment involved the cross shown below in which plants that were heterozygous for the Knob and the C gene were crossed to plants that lacked the knob and were homozygous for the recessive c allele. These experiments were carried out by Harriet Creighton and Barbara McClintock

From this experiment, the researchers concluded that the chromosome 9 Knob and the C gene were on the same chromosome and linked closely.

The second experiment used a strain of corn that was heterozygous for the Wx gene, the C gene and the knob. Creighton and McClintock carried out the following cross:

In your own words, state what the results of this cross says about the relationship between recombination and physical crossing over.

Image Credits

FIGURE 3. Carmine-stained pachytene chromosomes of the 441123 × 444331 hybrid showing cytologically visible knobs on chromosomes 3(B), 5(C), 6(F), 7(G), 8(I), and 9(J)

From Mondin etal

Karyotype variability in tropical maize sister inbred lines and hybrids compared with KYS standard line

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpls.2014.00544/full

Image URL: http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/111039/fpls-05-00544-HTML/image_m/fpls-05-00544-g003.jpg

CCBY

Maize

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize

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Maizmorado.png

Malosh

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maizmorado.png

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