Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Survival of the Sickest Chapter 6 Summary

Hey guys, here's a little rundown of the main points of this chapter!
-junk DNA, which makes up 97% of our DNA, isn't so junk after all as we msy need to mutate it in the future, also it's largely made of jumping genes, some of which are derived from viruses, who inject DNA into individual cells
-if viruses can adapt to their environments to prolong their survival, then maybe humans evolved according to their environment too, instead of just random mutations like Darwin thought
-evolutionary pressure caused jumping genes, or transposons, that add themselves to genomes without changing location
-retroviruses are made of RNA and can transcribe themselves from RNA to DNA, and they're super dangerous, like HIV
-also the story about Lamarck coming up with the theory of acquired traits was totally wrong, and was all just gossip spread about him
I know this is kinda short, but it's just what I thought were the main points of the chapter! It's pretty informational and full of a lotta good stuff, so you may want to check it out yourself!

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