BIO130H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Mycoplasma Genitalium, Noncoding Dna, Genetic Code

• School: UTSG
• Department: Biology
• Course: BIO130H1
• Professor: Melody Neumann

Document Summary

Heredity is central to the definition of life; distinguishes life from other processes in which orderly structures are generated but without the peculiarities of both parents & offspring. Nothing less than a cell has the capacity to gather raw materials from the environment & construct a new cell in its own image complete with a new copy of hereditary information. All cells store their hereditary information in the same linear chemical code (dna) All living cells on earth store their hereditary information in the form of double-stranded molecules of dna [long unbranched paired polymer chains formed from 4 types of monomers] Genetic information is universally read, interpreted & copied. All cells replace their hereditary information by templated polymerization. Mechanism that makes life possible depends on the structure of double stranded dna molecule. Monomer = sugar (deoxyribose) + phosphate + base. Each sugar is linked to the next by the phosphate.