The DNA Day Essay Contest aims to challenge students to examine, question, and reflect on the important concepts of genetics. Essays are expected to contain substantive, well-reasoned arguments indicative of a depth of understanding of the concepts related to the essay questions. Essays must be less than 750 words (excluding references). Here’s this year’s topics.
Genes exert their influence on organisms by being turned on and off in precise ways and at precise times. Disease can result when problems arise during this process of "gene regulation". The first processes of gene regulation to be discovered involved molecular "switches" that regulate transcription at gene promoters. In the last 20 years, genomic research has uncovered many new types of gene regulation that earlier researchers would have never imagined. Genes can be regulated by repressors, activators, enhancers, epigenetic changes to chromatin, RNA interference, the environment, and other processes. Choose one of the gene regulation processes listed above and, using references to support your argument, explain why/how that regulatory process is critically important to ONE of the following:
- early development
- normal cell function
- causation of disease or cell malfunction
Submission Deadline: March 12, 2012 at 5:00 PM EST.