Woo hoo! If we could only make everything we learn an arts and crafts project.
So April 25 is National DNA Day. It celebrates the day scientists first published their paper about the structure of DNA.
First I watched an animated video that explained what a genome is.
It was kinda complicated but some of the things I learned...
a genome is made up of DNA
the video called it the "parts list and instruction manual for life"
the DNA alphabet only has 4 letters ATGC and DNA words are only three letters long
your genome makes you who you are
the way you live like diet and exercise can affect the way your genome works
you can use DNA to trace your ancestors
DNA can be used to catch criminals
99.9% of your genome is similar to another person's
we're 85% similar to a mouse
41% similar to a banana!
Next, we found a bracelet project. Using 4 color beads to represent DNA letters you can write a secret message. We didn't have any beads at home so we'll have to make our own bracelet later. But we did work on decoding the message created by the colors on the example. I felt like a real scientist using the Amino Acid Codon Table!
And finally, we did an ORIGAMI project!!!
I was excited to find this on the genome.gov website.
But our printer isn't working. Luckily, we found a YouTube video that didn't require us to download and print a template. The origami is of the DNA structure called a double helix. I really liked making this. I made it twice. The picture of what I made is at the top of this blog post.
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