Sunday, August 7, 2011

SOS!! Biology homework help!?

oh Lord I'm a biology major...so many calculations. I won't give you the whole answer because I want you to learn plus I am suuuuuuuuper tired. Just remember-somatic cell means "body cell' thus an organism with 30 chromosomes in its somatic cell is going to have 15 chromosomes from Mom and 15 chromosomes from Dad. During the S-phase (synthesis phase) of the Interphase, the cell duplicates its number of chormosomes. There is ONE DNA molecule per ONE CHROMOSOME. thus, at the beginning of interphase, this somatic cell is going to have 30 DNA molecules. After S-phase (which is in the middle of interphase) there is replication thus the number of DNA molecules doubles from 30 to 60. Now, we learned in Biology cl that scientists have a strange way of referring to chromosomes....when a chromosome is single its just called a chromosome...when a chromosome replicates and is attached to its identical copy at the centromere region the two identical attached chromosomes are also refered to as 'a chromosome' although they are simultaneously called 'sister chromatids'. Considering this, after the chromosomes have been replicated from 30 to 60 are attached to each other, they would still be refered to 30 chromosomes BUT they would also equal 60 sister chromatids. I know chromatin fiber consists of the DNA material plus protein; when a chromosome is packed, certain regions of the DNA molecule wrap around a unit of histones (special proteins that aid in the contraction and packaging of chromosomes) some of the histones' amino acids are positively charged thus they allow chemical binding to the negatively charged sugar-phosphate backbone of DNA, which promotes packaging. Thus I would ume that one chromosome equals one unit of chromatin. Now, remember that mitosis divides one body cell into two completely identical body cells. Knowing that, the two daughter cells at the end of mitosis are going to have the same properties (number of everything) as the parent cell did at the beginning of its interphase. I hope this helps? Good luck with your biology work. If you have a textbook I recommened reading it and studying it thoroughly because just learning lectures is not sufficient enough when it comes to this subject

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