investigating diversity

Question 1

how can genetic diversity between or within a specified be measured?

Answer 1

-compare frequency of measurable or observable characteristics
-compare base sequence of DNA
-compare base sequence of mRNA
-comoare amino acid sequence of a specific protein encoded by DNA and mRNA

Question 2

Explain how comparing DNA,mRNA, and amino acid sequence can indicate relationships between organisms within a species and between species

Answer 2

more differences in sequence suggest more distantly related a species is as mutations build up over time and so there are more changes in the DNA base sequence, and more mutations cause more changes in the amino acid sequence

Question 3

Explain the change in methods of investigating genetic diversity over time.

Answer 3

early estimates are made by inferring DNA differences from measurable or observable characteristics however many are influenced by the environment and many are coded for by more than one gene
Now gene technologies allow this to be replaced by direct investigation of DNA sequences

Question 4

Explain the key considerations in quantitative investigations of variation within a species.

Answer 4

-Collect data from a random sampling which removes bias
-Large smaple size so is representative
-Ethical sampling
-Calculate the mean value of collected data and the standard deviation of that mean
-Use statistical test, analyse whether there is a significant difference between populations