BIOC19H3 Lecture 3: Lecture 3 Notes
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We must break the process down to learn it in detail. Slide 2, why is rbc development a good model, It is a good example of cell differentiation. Red blood cells start with a stem cell (undifferentiated) at this stage the cell has no detectible levels of hemoglobin. However, this changes as the cell matures into an adult blood cell. 95% of the protein in the adult cell is hemoglobin and it came from a blood cell that had no hemoglobin in it at all. Hemoglobin is needed for functioning of the adult cell. The process follows a sequence and we can follow these steps under a microscope. We can carry out molecular analysis because we can separate these stages and analyze what the changes are. There are marker proteins, globin genes, which is a marker gene, which can identify stages of development.