7:00 video: This film is the first of a two part series on the evolution of new genetic information. Here we focus on Point Mutations - the simplest natural mechanisms known to increase the genetic information of a population.
Our second film of the series will focus on duplication events - natural mutations that increase the total amount of genetic information of an individual.
This film was produced under the guidance of molecular biologist Dr. Nicholas Casewell. http://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/...
Point mutations are small, natural edits in the DNA code of an individual. These edits can be passed from parent to child. Because they are mere edits, point mutations usually do not increase the total amount of information in an individual. As new information is gained, old information is lost. Point mutations do, however, increase the total amount of information within a population.
In this film you will see several examples of beneficial point mutations which have enhanced a creatures abilities or even given rise to entirely new abilities. The first two examples were directly observed in bacteria by scientists in the lab. The third is a case found in domestic dogs, the last example was discovered in several species of wild animal.
This animation depicts the CRISPR-Cas9 method for genome editing - a powerful new technology with many applications in biomedical research, including the potential to treat human genetic disease. Feng Zhang, a leader in the development of this technology, is a faculty member at MIT, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and a core member of the Broad Institute. Further information can be found on Prof. Zhang's website at http://zlab.mit.edu .
In this video Paul Andersen explains how the CRISPR/Cas immune system was identified in bacteria and how the CRISPR/Cas9 system was developed to edit genomes.
In our first animation of this series we learned how point mutations can edit genetic information. Here we see how duplication events can dramatically lengthen the genetic code of an individual. As point mutations add up in the duplicated region across generations, entirely new genes with new functions can evolve.
In the video we see three examples of gene duplications resulting in new traits for the creatures who inherit them: the evolution of a venom gene in snakes, the evolution of leaf digestion genes in monkeys, and the evolution of burrowing legs in hunting dogs.
You've always been told sugar is bad for you, but how bad is it really? Find out in this science music video - researched, written, sung, directed, shot, and edited by 8th graders from The Nueva School in California. This song is a science parody of "Sunday Candy" by Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, featuring Chance the Rapper and Jamila Woods.
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