Me O my o Osis
Unlike mitosis, meiosis produces daughter cells with this characteristic, making them suitable for sexual reproduction.
What is haploid? What is genetically unique?
This monk uncovered fundamental patterns of inheritance.
Who is Gregor Mendel?
Allele frequencies can't change in a single organism — which is why evolution is observed at this level.
What is a population?
From a single fertilized egg to a trillion-cell organism, this process is responsible for all the cell divisions that build a body.
What is growth/development?
A single miscopied base pair during DNA replication can result in this — much of the time harmless, sometimes not.
What is a mutation?
Sexual reproduction's evolutionary edge over cloning comes down to this — the raw material natural selection needs to act on.
What is genetic diveristy?
A genotype with two copies of the recessive allele.
What is homozygous recessive?
The polar bear's white fur and the cactus's spines are both examples of this — traits shaped through natural selection to be beneficial in a specific environment.
What is an adaptation?
Skin cells, liver cells, and neurons all share this property with the parent cell that produced them — two full sets of chromosomes, one from each parent.
What is diploid?
Swap just one of these across the double helix and you might change an amino acid — or nothing at all, depending on the codon.
What is a nitrogenous base?
What is a base?
This is what homologous chromosomes are doing when they swap segments during meiosis I — and one reason why siblings aren't identical.
What is crossing over? or What is recombination?
What is a heterozygote or heterozygous?
The faster cheetah survives — but it's not the population that natural selection is acting on, it's this.
What is the individual?
The cell has copied its genome and is doing final quality checks before committing to division — this is the last stop before mitosis begins.
What is G2 phase?
Sickle cell anemia results from this — a single base change that rewrites one amino acid and distorts the entire hemoglobin protein.
What is a point mutation?
Organisms with two copies of each chromosome.
What are diploid organisms?
Skin color and height are examples of this type of trait, controlled by multiple genes rather than just one.
What is a polygenic trait?
Darwin observed finches with dramatically different beak shapes on these islands, sparking his thinking about adaptation and descent with modification.
What are the Galapagos Islands?
DNA replication can't begin until this enzyme runs down the double helix like a zipper being pulled open.
What is helicase?
Like removing a letter from a sentence mid-word, this mutation scrambles every codon downstream — even a single missing base can derail the whole protein.
What is a frameshift mutation/insertion/deletion?
Meiosis occurs in these types of cells.
What are germ cells?
Sons inherit this category of trait from their mothers, not their fathers — because the X in XY can only come from mom.
What is an x-linked trait?
By this measure, the most "successful" organism in the room might not be the strongest or smartest — just the one that left the most offspring.
What is fitness?
Normally checkpoints stop a damaged cell from dividing — but when those brakes fail, the result can be this unchecked mass of cells.
What is a tumor?
Cigarette smoke, UV radiation, and certain chemicals all earn this label — external agents that increase the rate of DNA sequence changes.
What is a mutagen?
The phase of meiosis in which crossing over occurs.
What is prophase 1?
A red flower crossed with a white flower produces a pink one — a classic example of this, where neither allele fully dominates.
What is incomplete dominance?
When one extreme phenotype is favored over all others, allele frequencies shift in one direction through this type of selection.
What is directional selection?
Your fingers exist because millions of cells between them deliberately killed themselves during development — this is the term for that orderly self-destruction.
What is apoptosis.
HIV is a famous example of this particle that can permanently alter host DNA by inserting its own genetic material into the genome
What is a virus?