Agouti Gene

Caleb Pan
Report # 1
Problem

The problem of the experiment is how a diet in a pregnant mother can change genes in her offspring. Scientists used a fat yellow mouse that carried a gene made the color of their coat different and leads to obesity, diabetes, and cancer in the mouse. If scientists can figure out this strange occurrence, they are able to help human beings in perfecting their diets and may even lead to better drugs to minimize the risk of cancer and obesity.

Observations

During methylation, a process in which biological mechanisms other than mutations that affect how a gene or genes function, a methyl group attaches to a gene. This process stops genes that are not needed by a cell. The genes on one of the two X chromosomes in each female cell are silenced by this process, which are not needed. Another observation of methyl groups and other small molecules help relax the coils of DNA so that inactive genes are active and vice versa. The tight coiled DNA ma...