First: I have no affiliation with www.fatbrain.com.
Your questions are very broad and will likely not get a good description
directly from the newsgroup. Note that the items you list would fall more
correctly under the heading of genetics and have nothing to do with cell
structure.
Search www.fatbrain.com for texts. "Sociobiology" alone returns 80 hits.
I bet some of them have chapters on molecular biology and genetics.
Another good search term for your questions would be "genetics".
See if you can find "Basic Genetics" by Weaver and Hedrick:
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp?theisbn=0697137325&vm=
A good classroom text on molecular biology and the mechanisms of genetics
"The Molecular Biology of the Gene":
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp?theisbn=0805348247&vm=
And here's a link to their page for "Dictionary of Cell and Molecular Biology" which is cheaper than the others:
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp?theisbn=0124325653&vm=s
To help you out a little with the specific terms, in brief:
- Phenotypes: Think of this as the visible effect a gene has on the organism. The red color of a tomato is it's phenotype.
- Genotypes: The specific genes that make the tomato red.
- Dominant Gene / Recessive Gene: A dominant gene refers more to a gene's phenotype than the gene itself (no discussion on what constitutes a gene
here ... much too long).
You know you have two copies of every gene? One from mom and the other from dad. The different variations of those genes are called
alleles. One allele might give you brown eyes instead of blue (oversimplified). If you have a copy of brown from mom and a copy of blue
from dad but in reality your eyes are brown then the brown allele is said to be dominant while the blue gene is recessive. You would need
a copy of blue from mom and another copy of blue from dad in order to have blue eyes. (Disclaimer: I know nothing about the "real" genes
effecting human eye color).
- Pleiotropic: If a single gene has multiple phenotypes it is said to be pleiotropic.
- Polygenetic: A trait (such as eye color or the red skin of a tomato) that is the cumulative effect of more than one gene is said
to be polygenetic.
Good Luck,
I'll be disappointed if this stuff just gets copied and pasted into an exam.
- Bill Nussbaumer
Sent by: owner-microbio at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk
To: microbio at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk
cc:
Subject: Re: Help on genetic structure, please
On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Mads Rokkjær Hammer wrote:
>> Hi.
> I'm a university student in the science of religion, and I am getting
into
> sociobiology. But I need some help on some topics/elements in the cell
> structure, that I don't understand. So I hope some of you would help me,
> please?
> What is:
> - Phenotypes?
> - Genotypes?
> - Dominant genes?
> - Recessive genes?
> - Pleiotropic?
> - Polygenetic?
>> I really hope that some of you guys could give me some help here....or
some
> suggestions to, where I can read on the topic in a VERY paedagogic way?
> I would be glad if some of you know something on Sociobiology, too - and
> could give me an "easy" introduction to it!
> Thanks a lot...regards
> /Mads Hammer from Denmark
>
. . . dictionaries of biology in your library, or the Oxford English
Dictionary are good starts. Mike.
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