In the last article we looked at inheritance of a characteristic coded for by a single gene which has one dominant allele and one recessive allele. However, sometimes alleles can be codominant or there can be more than two alleles for a gene. This increases the number of possible phenotypes. Let's look at each case... Continue Reading →
Haemoglobin – Exchange and Transport Ep 12
In the last article I mentioned that red blood cells contain a protein called haemoglobin. In simple terms, the haemoglobin protein binds to oxygen and transports it around the body. As with most of biology there's a bit more to it than that, so here we will look at how this process works in more... Continue Reading →
Inorganic Ions – Biological Molecules Ep 10
Ions are atoms or molecules that have gained or lost electrons and therefore have a negative or positive charge. An inorganic ion is an ion that doesn't contain carbon (with the exception of HCO3-, but we're not talking about high level chemistry here so we won't worry about why that is!). So let's have a... Continue Reading →
Proteins – Biological Molecules Ep 9
We've already looked at the monomers that make up a protein: amino acids. But fully functioning proteins are often much more complex in structure than a simple polypeptide chain. Today we will look at the different levels of structure in proteins and some specific examples. Levels of protein structure So let's start with a quick... Continue Reading →
