Description
If you could read the three billion pairs of letters in your DNA, what story would they tell? Are you a descendant of royal bloodlines, or did you inherit faulty genes that predispose you to cancer? In the reproductive chromosome shuffle, will your kids inherit defective genes, or will they win the genetic lottery? And can we find secret clues to our ancient human ancestors hidden in our genome? In this course, students will learn how and what DNA can tell us about our traits, our ancestry, and our distant past. We will focus on the language of DNA and how it is inherited, read, interpreted, and sometimes misinterpreted or distorted. Topics include heredity, eugenics, ancestry DNA testing, ancient DNA and mutations. We will also peer into our immediate future and the brave and promising new world that cutting-edge DNA technologies are ushering in. Can our DNA destiny be changed by diet, exercise, and a healthy environment, or are we doomed to a life of errors in our code? With ch