Why does a person look like this and not otherwise? Why do children look like their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters? This question interested people long before the advent of such a science as genetics. She appeared relatively recently. The founder of this science is Gregor Mendel, who lived in the 19th century and formulated several laws according to which certain traits are inherited.
At the beginning of the 20th century, this area interested many scientists and received serious development. In 1909, the concept of a gene was formulated and put into use. A gene is a section of a DNA chain, a familiar double helix that is contained in every human cell and carries all the information about it. DNA is also contained in germ cells, and when they merge, the DNA of two organisms is mixed with the formation of a new unique chain that combines the DNA of not only parent organisms, but also parts of the chains of all their ancestors. A gene is a unit of information about a trait or group of traits in an organism. Some genes partially duplicate the information encoded in them, so each creature that appeared through sexual reproduction is completely unique. It is believed that all information about the body is encoded by at least 30-50 thousand genes, but there can be much more.
That is, every facial feature, hair color, skin, eyes, nail shape, all metabolic processes - all this is encoded by a group or a single gene. It's so interesting to study and decipher! This is what scientists are doing.
Molecular genetics - one of the branches of general science - is concerned with the study of the structure of the gene. According to the latest data, its nonlinear structure conditionally consists of two sequences: coding and non-coding, which are called exon and nitron, respectively. This discovery was made after studying the DNA of eukaryotes, that is, the genome of an organism whose cells contain a nucleus. In fact, DNA molecules are made up of nucleotides, which encode all information
about the body. And from the point of view of chemistry, all these are proteins.
The latest discoveries and achievements in genetics have given impetus to medicine, breeding, biology, criminology and other sciences. An accurate understanding of exactly what information a particular gene carries is the key to the treatment of many diseases. You can find out the origin of a person, confirm or deny the relationship of various people, and much more. In the future, when scientists are able to model and correct the genome, it will be possible to defeat many diseases, develop new plant varieties and animal breeds. Isn't that tempting?
There is another interesting concept in genetics -gene flow. It means the appearance in one population of a large number of genes inherent in anotherpopulation due to migration flows. That is, if we apply this term to people, this is a mixture of two races, assimilation.
Genetics is an amazing and very interesting science, which in the future may become one of the most important and promising. It not only determines what will be, but can also find out what was. With its help, it will be possible to confirm or refute the existing theories of the appearance of man.
