Cracking the Code of Life
Name
Answer the questions below as you watch the movie. You must have 30 questions complete to get credit. Use the back if you need more space.
1.
What percentage of genes is shared between humans and bananas?
2.
Why is our DNA so similar to that of a banana?
3.
What is the classic shape of a DNA molecule?
4.
What does DNA really look like to the naked eye?
5.
What two unexpected things have they learned about our DNA from the Human Genome Project?
6.
What are the four chemicals that make up the “steps” in the ladder of DNA?
7.
What do you pass to your children?
8.
What is Tay-Sachs disease?
9.
What does it do to a child’s development?
10. How big is the error in the DNA code that causes Tay-Sachs disease?
11. What does that error affect and what can the affected molecule no longer do?
12. Is Tay-Sachs common or rare?
13. For a baby to have Tay-Sachs it has to inherit the defective gene from only 1 parent or both parents?
14. Why was Blyth considered a carrier?
15. What does Dr. Lander say about how similar our DNA is to each other relative to chimpanzees to each other?
16. Why are we so similar to each other?
17. What is wrong with Riley?
18. Has discovering the gene for CF changed how it is treated?
19. What is gene therapy?
20. What are they going to try to fix instead?
21. Proteins vs. DNA; which one is 1-dimensional which one is 3-dimensional?
22. What does the shape of a protein determine?
23. What is different about Riley’s code?
24. What does the healthy version of the protein do?
25. Why is Tony different for a person with CF?
26. What is the proteome?
27. How many genes do we really have?
28. Why is Iceland the perfect place to look for gene causing diseases?
29. What disease did Melanie have?
30. What is the difference between the normal sequence and the cancerous sequence?
31. What did the Dr. in GATTACA fix in the unborn child?
32. Could we engineer a human being with the eyesight of a hawk right now?
33. What might go wrong?
34. What is the contemporary job of biology?
35. When was the human genome completed?
36. What percent of the 3 billion letters is in genes?
37. What is the other 50% of the genome?
38. What does it mean that the human genome is lumpy?