Learning Artifact 7

I enjoyed the refresher this week on mitosis and meiosis. I learned about these topics in high school, but it’s been a couple years since AP Bio and I’d definitely forgotten the differences between mitosis and meiosis and what purpose they both serve.

I found the diagrams to be helpful in remembering exactly how the process works and how the chromosomes align in each stage. I especially liked the colored diagrams of crossing over in meiosis; I think it gave me a good understanding of why crossing over is important.

One thing I didn’t catch is how exactly mutations occur. Why is copying of DNA and RNA not fully accurate — what goes wrong in that process that would cause a point mutation or a deletion?