The Stubborn Gene

SIMPLIFYING GENETICS

Now that you have decided to look into the field of genetics, I wish you all the brains required to understand it. See, I know it can be hard to learn or understand the so many terminologies and the definitions that surpasses the basic requirements of your interest of research in this field, that's why first I will try to make you feel comfortable as much as possible.

See there are two types of a student in biological science  - one memorizes and the other understands; I want you to understand rather than memorize. I want you to concentrate less on 'Facts' and more on the 'Concepts'. Try to have a conceptual understanding of genetics first before moving forward to memorize the facts. This way, you will surely develop the interest and would not get stressed at all.

For example, I remember when I was pursuing my B. Tech. in Genetic Engineering, one of my professors tried to confuse me by asking "Does the DNA contains the Gene or the Gene contains the DNA?" and I literally got dumbstruck, you know why? Because at that young age I used to memorize the bookish definitions as much as possible without trying to understand what these actually meant. I only knew the definition of 'DNA' as a separate terminology to the terminology of 'Gene'. It was later when I actually understood that 'Gene' is just a coined term for the hereditary information that passes in the process of evolution and 'DNA' or Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid is nothing but the chemical name for it. But yes, if asked we can always say that a gene is a segment of DNA so DNA contains the genes and not the other way around. So basically, DNA is a well observed molecule that contains genes.

Within a biological cell, there is a set of chromosomes made up of chromatin that contains nucleosome beads each made up of 8 histone proteins wrapped up by 147 base pairs (bp) of DNA that contains gene sequences made up of 4 nucleotides A, G, T, C (Adenine, Guanine, Thymine, Cytosine) where A & G are called Purines and T & C are called Pyrimidines - will come later on this....

Thus, this way through this blog, I will try to make you all understand genetics as easily as possible before you start memorizing it to attain those clumsy marks or grades in your class. WISHING YOU ALL THE BEST AND HAVE FUN READING...!!