Unit 5 Reflection

In this Unit, we learned about the central dogma of biology, how protein is made, and about mutations. The central dogma of biology is that DNA becomes RNA which becomes proteins which eventually become a organism. But in order to make the protein it has to go through the process of transcription and translation. Transcription is the process of RNA polymerase reading and copying DNA code into a temporary mRNA copy. This mRNA then travels to the cytoplasm to be translated. Once the mRNA arrives at the ribosome, the ribosome reads the mRNA in pairs of 3 or codons to correspond to an amino acid. Once the whole sequence has been translated, there is a string of amino acids left, or a protein. However, during this process bases in the sequence can be changed, which is what we call a mutation. Some types of mutation are insertion, deletion, and substitution. Insertion means inserting another base into the sequence, deleting means deleting a base, and substitution means substituting a base pair for another base pair. 

In this unit some of my weaknesses were fully grasping the concept of translation to create a protein. It took me a while to understand why that process was needed and how to exactly translate the DNA sequence itself. However some of my strengths were learning about mutations because that was a concept I could pick up really quickly. But, for translating DNA I was able to understand it much more because of the protein synthesis lab we did. In that lab we practiced translating DNA and thoroughly understood the process of protein synthesis.

After this Unit, I think I have grown as a learner. I would classify a good learner as one that learns from his or her mistakes and grows because of it. I think I would fall into that group. In the beginning of the year, I did not have the correct strategies to learn. I would wander off during vodcasts and not really pay attention and that had bad outcomes for me. However now I actively listen and my grades have reflected that. Overall this Unit has taught me a lot and has made me a better student.