Part 1
I was once a gene. Living the gene life. It was great. I just got to sit back, relax, and make protein molecules. I had a nice home. Lived in a great chromosomal neighborhood. To be specific, I lived in Chromosome 9p21.2. We genes are pretty tight within each other, you know. There wasn’t much else to do, it was a pretty slow life. Everyone in the chromosome knew everyone. All 25,000 of us. It’s crazy when you think about it.
All was going well, until one day. Me and my gene neighbor noticed that there was an extra gene that appeared. It was like he came out of nowhere, we didn’t know what happened. We didn’t know who he was but we knew he wasn’t supposed to be there.
For a while, me and all the other genes didn’t talk to him. He was different. None of the genes here were exactly the same, but we were alike in some ways, but this gene. He was was off.
None of the genes knew this at the time, but there were serious health implications to their human host.
The exact cause of ALS is unknown, but we know it is caused by a mutated gene adding, changing or deleting nucleotides, resulting in the production of a protein with altered or reduced function. The affect of this on the human host may include muscle spasticity and weakness, affecting movement in your body, causing difficulty chewing, swallowing, and breathing. Also causing slurred speech.
Part 2
In order to research this subject, I needed to search more in depth about genes and genetic mutation, to understand more regarding how a mutation is caused and what implications it may have. After that I researched about ALS from a general perspective, and started reading from several articles that proved to be credible, and only using published scientific documents through a university or research foundation. Within those articles I was able to find specific information about genetic mutation linked with ALS. Resources I used to get started with this process were Google Scholar and the Google search engine.
Although I had some trouble getting started with the process, overall I think the process went well, and I was able to complete the assignment and get all the information necessary that I needed.