BCHM 4116 1st Edition Lecture 5 Outline of Last Lecture I The Secondary and Tertiary Structures of RNA II tRNA III Physical structure of genes in eukaryotes IV Genome size correlates with biological complexity Outline of Current Lecture II Genome size vs complexity III Diversity IV Evolution Current Lecture Genome size vs complexity Things that affect genome size without affecting complexity of organism 1 No change in gene count but change in repetitive sequence a Major cause of size of genome variation without affecting complexity 2 Segmental duplication a A whole chunk of chromosome duplicates itself either locally or else where 3 In plants polyploidy occurs a Can have 4n or 8n or more counts Diversity Ways to lend yourself some flexibility without changing gene number Majority of sequences don t do anything for the organism besides repeat themselves Genome size variation is a phenomenon that s observed but doesn t have to do anything with biological complexity Gene number 20 000 in humans How many states can this particular organism or cell take in response to the environment One gene has two possible states on or off These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute 500 genes have 2500 possible states Each gene can be on or off The difference in 1000 genes between humans and worms is actually a lot of difference because its 2 1000 is a huge difference already Genes can be tweaked through post translation modification One gene can give you lots of different RNA or proteins due to gene splicing Affords you the possibility of flexibility Cell cell interaction and interaction with environment are controlled by regulation We have genes not only to keep us alive but to regulate our gene expression based on response to the environment Greater your regularity power the greater complexity that you could have Evolution The better you are at regulation response to environment the better chance you have to survive When talking about biological complexity it doesn t mean that a simpler organism is worse than us What matters is how you survive in your environment whether you are adapted to the environment you re you Complexity is good but it not the ultimate goal of evolution the goal is to survive in whatever environment you re in