Standard Area - MST:
Math, Science & Technology
- Standard - MST4: Students will understand and apply scientific concepts, principles, and theories pertaining to the physical setting and living environment and recognize the historical development of ideas in science.
- Key Idea Code - MST4.LE:
- Key Idea - MST4.LE2: Organisms inherit genetic information in a variety of ways that result in continuity of structure and function between parents and offspring.
- Academic Level - MST4.C.LE2:
- Performance Indicator - MST4.C.LE2A: Students explain how the structure and replication of genetic
material result in offspring that resemble their parents.
- Major Understandings - 2.1a : Genes are inherited, but their expression can be modified by interactions with the
environment.
- Major Understandings - 2.1b : Every organism requires a set of coded instructions for specifying its traits. For offspring to resemble their parents, there must be a reliable way to transfer information
from one generation to the next. Heredity is the passage of these instructions from one
generation to another.
- Major Understandings - 2.1c : Hereditary information is contained in genes, located in the chromosomes of each
cell. An inherited trait of an individual can be determined by one or by many genes, and
a single gene can influence more than one trait. A human cell contains many thousands
of different genes in its nucleus.
- Major Understandings - 2.1d : In asexually reproducing organisms, all the genes come from a single parent.
Asexually produced offspring are normally genetically identical to the parent.
- Major Understandings - 2.1e : In sexually reproducing organisms, the new individual receives half of the genetic
information from its mother (via the egg) and half from its father (via the sperm). Sexually
produced offspring often resemble, but are not identical to, either of their parents.
- Major Understandings - 2.1f : In all organisms, the coded instructions for specifying the characteristics of the
organism are carried in DNA, a large molecule formed from subunits arranged in a
sequence with bases of four kinds (represented by A, G, C, and T). The chemical and
structural properties of DNA are the basis for how the genetic information that under-
lies heredity is both encoded in genes (as a string of molecular "bases") and replicated
by means of a template.
- Major Understandings - 2.1g : Cells store and use coded information. The genetic information stored in DNA is
used to direct the synthesis of the thousands of proteins that each cell requires.
- Major Understandings - 2.1h : Genes are segments of DNA molecules. Any alteration of the DNA sequence is a
mutation. Usually, an altered gene will be passed on to every cell that develops from it.
- Major Understandings - 2.1j : Offspring resemble their parents because they inherit similar genes that code for
the production of proteins that form similar structures and perform similar functions.
- Major Understandings - 2.1i : The work of the cell is carried out by the many different types of molecules it
assembles, mostly proteins. Protein molecules are long, usually folded chains made
from 20 different kinds of amino acids in a specific sequence. This sequence influences
the shape of the protein. The shape of the protein, in turn, determines its function.
- Major Understandings - 2.1k : The many body cells in an individual can be very different from one another, even
though they are all descended from a single cell and thus have essentially identical
genetic instructions. This is because different parts of these instructions are used in
different types of cells, and are influenced by the cell's environment and past history.
