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Of
course we all know it was Gregor Mendel who provided the
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answer. A contemporary of Darwin, Mendel showed
that traits were
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carried
from generation to generation in a predictable manner and that
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the
information is carried by “factors” (the term genes was not coined
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until
the 1900's by Columbia University professor Walter Sutton).
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Mendel’s
studies provided the means by which new traits could be
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acquired
by an organism as it evolved. But what determines the actual
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traits? What material makes our eyes brown,
determines where we eat
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meat,
plants or both, mammal or insect?
The answer is proteins.
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Genes
determine traits and they carry the information about the
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properties
of every protein. That information
is a blue print on how to
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make
each protein. So what are
proteins? This is where biochemistry
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begins.
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