Why does a person look like this, and not otherwise? Why do children look like their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters? This question interested people long before the advent of such a science as genetics. She appeared relatively recently. The founder of this science is Gregor Mendel, who lived in the 19th century and formulated several laws according to which the inheritance of certain signs occurs.
At the beginning of the 20th century, this area interested many scientists and was seriously developed. In 1909, the concept of a gene was formulated and introduced . A gene is a portion of a DNA strand that is familiar to everyone in the double helix that is contained in every human cell and carries all the information about it. DNA is also found in germ cells, and when they merge, the DNA of the two organisms is mixed to form a new unique chain that combines the DNA of not only the parent organisms, but also the parts of the chains of all their ancestors. A gene is a unit of information about a trait or group of traits of an organism. Some genes partially duplicate the information encoded in them, so each creature that appears through sexual reproduction is completely unique. It is believed that all information about the body is encoded by at least 30-50 thousand genes, but there may be much more.
That is, every facial feature, color of hair, skin, eyes, shape of nails, all metabolic processes - all this is encoded by a group or an individual gene. It's so interesting to study and decipher! That is what scientists are doing.
Molecular genetics - one of the branches of general science - is engaged in studying the structure of the gene. According to recent data, its nonlinear structure conditionally consists of two sequences: coding and non-coding, which are called exon and nitron, respectively. This discovery was made after studying the DNA of eukaryotes, that is, the genome of an organism whose cells contain a nucleus. In fact, DNA molecules are made up of nucleotides that encode all the information
about the body. And from the point of view of chemistry, all
these are proteins.The latest discoveries and achievements of genetics have given impetus to medicine, selection, biology, forensics and other sciences. An accurate understanding of what information a particular gene carries is the key to treating many diseases. You can find out the origin of a person, confirm or deny the kinship of various people, and much more. In the future, when scientists can model and adjust the genome, it will be possible to defeat many diseases, develop new varieties of plants and animal breeds. Isn't it tempting?
In genetics, there is another interesting concept - the flow of genes. It means the appearance in one population of a large number of genes inherent in another
populations due to migration flows. That is, if you apply this term to people, it is a mixture of two races, assimilation.
Genetics is an amazing and very interesting science, which in the future may become one of the most important and promising. She not only determines what will happen, but can also figure out what happened. With its help, it will be possible to confirm or refute the existing theories of the appearance of man.