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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Infodump incoming:

    Amino acids are the basic building blocks of life. DNA encodes which animo acids to put together in which order, and when. Ribosomes read bits of RNA that was copied from DNA and match up amino acids. The different animo acids correspond to different three nucleotides combinations (the As, Cs, Gs, and Ts of DNA). The ribosome attaches each animo acid in a chain.

    When the amino acid chain detaches from the ribosome it folds into a protein. Different amino acids in different orders affect how the protein folds and what it becomes. Proteins are the structures and machinery of our cells.

    There are 20 amino acids we need to make the proteins we rely on. Our bodies can make some of them and some of them we can’t. The ones our bodies can’t make we have to get from our diet. Those ones are called vital amines, or vitamins for short.




  • Evolution throws spaghetti at the wall and anything that sticks it keeps. Usually stuff sticks because it’s useful in some way, but some stuff sticks just because of random chance.

    For example if a few individuals colonize a new location, then whatever genes those founders have will be prevalent in the new population. The classic example is the deaf people on Martha’s Vineyard. Some of the original settlers of the island were deaf and passed that down to their descendants.

    The smaller a population is the more it’s affected by random genetic drift. (It’s easier for a gene to randomly spread to an entire population if the population is small.) The larger it is the more it’s affected by natural selection.