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Genetics Review

Answer Key

MCAS Practice Test

DNA

• A library of info telling your body’s cells how to build you. 
• Shaped as a double helix, this chemical spiral codes for life.
• Full name is deoxyribonucleic acid.

Some people think that I’m a totally twisted individual, but while my slinky curves turn heads,

I'm actually quite a bookish character.  I'm so astounding that within my graceful folds and

sinuous switchbacks lies the secret of life itself.

Cell has a library of me, called the genome, stored for safekeeping in the nucleus.

The library has 46 “books” in it called chromosomes.

Each page of each book is a gene that holds the code for one attribute - your hair color or

weakness to certain diseases, for example. The words in these books of life are molecules

that link together to make a corkscrew chain. Strangely, most of your DNA is junk - it has no meaning.

Although each person's DNA is unique, 99 percent of it is identical to that of everyone else.

• Discoverer: Friedrich Miescher (1869)
  
  
• Number of human genes: 20,000 to 25,000
  
  
• Number of times the body’s DNA is damaged per day: 10,000
  
  

adapted from Basher Biology 2008

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RNA

• A shadowy figure who pulls the strings behind the scenes.
• Built like DNA but without the double twist.
• Three letter name means ribonucleic acid.

I will always live in the shadow of my dazzling cousin, DNA. It’s unfair - DNA gets all the
attention for just holding the secrets of life. I’m the one who does all the work!

I’m much too busy to sit around doing nothing all day like DNA. As one of the few molecules
allowed to slip in and out of the nucleus, I can get everywhere. Like a spy selling secrets,
I make a copy of DNA’s genetic manual and spread it through the cell.

I unravel DNA’s double helix into two strands and then mold my body to fit with one of them.
Then, with the help Ribosomes, the master code breakers in Cell, I follow the instructions in
the manual and make the molecules that the body’s workers need.

• Date of discovery: 1939
• Average size: 0.35 μm
• Viruses that use RNA: retroviruses such as HIV

adapted from Basher Biology 2008

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DNA/RNA Questions

Weather and Climate Lesson

Nearpod Weather and Climate

Websites for Climate Change Project

Global Warming for Kids

World Wildlife: Climate

EPA: Climate Change

Plate Tectonics Review

Plate Tectonics Period 4

Plate Tectonics Period 6