Inherited Wealth
This double-helix molecule carries the genetic code inside the nucleus of your cells.
What is DNA?
This is the scientific term for the differences in characteristics between individuals of the same species.
What is variation?
These are the preserved remains or traces of dead organisms from millions of years ago, often found buried in rocks.
What are fossils?
Natural selection is often summed up by this famous four-word phrase regarding who survives in nature.
What is "survival of the fittest"?
It's the reason Charles Darwin decided to cross the road.
What is "because it was the natural selection"?
This is a small section of DNA that codes for a specific characteristic or protein.
What is a gene?
Scars, spoken language, and dyed hair are examples of this specific type of variation.
What is environmental variation?
This 19th-century scientist famously visited the Galapagos Islands and proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Who is Charles Darwin?
In the process of natural selection, individuals that are poorly adapted to their environment usually suffer this fate.
What is they die (or fail to reproduce)?
This is a geneticist's absolute favorite type of trousers to wear.
What are designer genes?
This term describes having two identical alleles for a gene, such as "bb" or "BB".
What is homozygous?
Blood group and natural eye colour, which fall into distinct, separate categories, are examples of this type of variation.
What is discontinuous or discrete variation?
This is the nickname given to the famous 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered in Ethiopia.
Who is Lucy?
This is a random, spontaneous change in a DNA sequence that can sometimes create a new, advantageous allele.
What is a mutation?
It's the reason the piece of DNA jumped from one microscope to another.
What is "to get to the other slide"?
If "B" for brown eyes is dominant, and "b" for blue eyes is recessive, this is the eye colour of someone who has the genotype "Bb".
What is brown?
Height and weight, which can be measured across a numerical range, are examples of this type of variation.
What is continuous variation?
These ancient artifacts provide evidence for human evolution because scientists can see them becoming more complex and sharply crafted over millions of years.
What are stone tools?
After an organism survives a selection pressure, it must do this in order to pass its advantageous alleles on to the next generation.
What is reproduce (or breed)?
This is what the bossy DNA strand yelled at the RNA strand.
What is "stop copying me!"?
This is the exact number of chromosomes most usually found in a human gamete (a sperm or an egg cell).
What is 23?
These are the two main factors that combine to cause variation in most living organisms.
What are genetics and the environment?
This scientist worked independently but came up with the same theory of evolution at the same time as Darwin, famously studying warning colours in animals.
Who is Alfred Russel Wallace?
This is a dangerous modern-day example of natural selection occurring in bacteria, making it difficult to treat infections in hospitals.
hat is antibiotic resistance?
It is how we know that single celled organisms are particularly good at maths when reproducing.
What is "they multiply by dividing"?