immersed in genetics

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I am immersed in genetics.  In Plants class we got a taste of epigenetics -- the heritable (!!!) influence of environment on gene expression.  There's a Coursera class on epigenetics, but it needs a "basic genetics" class as a prerequisite, so I'm taking one now.  I started it when it was already 2 weeks into a 6-week class.  I was still in Plants and Dinos at that point, so I didn't start paying attention to Genetics until the last several days. 

I discovered this weekend that I could still pass Genetics if I buckled right down to it, so that's what I'm doing.  As of about half an hour ago, I have listened to all of the lectures, and have taken all the quizzes, for weeks 1-4 of the class.  I still need to take the midterm (on weeks 1-3), and then I'll be caught up.  Week 5 starts tomorrow..........

Genes and the Human Condition is really interesting!!!  Especially as what we know about genetics and epigenetics keeps updating every 5 minutes, in large part because the computer technology that lets us sequence (and compare) genomes gets better every minute.....  (Something of an exaggeration, but not much!)

The things we are learning in this class -- about ourselves compared to other living organisms, and about ourselves compared to Neanderthals and other extinct forms of humans..............  Mind-bending.

One random human varies from an unrelated other human, on average, about one in every thousand base pairs (a "base pair" is one rung on a DNA ladder).  The human genome varies from the chimp genome by about one in every hundred base pairs.  That means we are only ten times more different from chimps than any one of us is different from other people we're not related to.  !!!

Mind-bending!

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