Time, Love, Memory: Entry #2 Important Key Points

Three Key Points:
The first key point in the book is DNA the genes of the organisms that they studied over. For the most part their study was on fruit flies and about them crossing over and seeing the dominant and recessive traits that were given by the parent flies, also known as sex linked traits. This is what we basically did on the online lab with drosophila flies the other day, Benzer and his colleagues basically did the same thing as us in finding out the genes and traits that came from each offspring. DNA played an important role during this time because in the book, while Benzer was conducting his experiment on the way animal behavior of flies, Watson and Crick made their big discovery on DNA. This later helped Benzer when him and the other scientists began to work together in search of the genes of the fruit fly. It also helped with them finding out about eugenics and how it affected the Germans.

The second key point in the book is animal behavior. From our ecology chapters we learned about taxis and kinesis from our worm lab and how some behaviors are learned and innate. We have kinesis which is a movement that is random and does not result with respect to the stimulus and we also have taxis which is a direct response to the stimulus. Every since chapter 1, we've seen the effects of animal behavior in the different environments that the flies were placed in. We've seen them being place in tubes that resemble panpipes and to see how they react in the light and dark regions, and we've also seen the flies move towards the edge in an experiment only to find out later by Benzer that it was because some of the flies contained traits that inhibited them from having good vision.

The third key point in the book is structure of the fly as well as other structures in the body's of other organisms. Throughout the entire book we've look at structure and organization, which is one of the main themes of biology. We've looked at parts of the flies in terms of eyes, wings, body shape, etc. As for other species, we've looked at the brains of other organisms as well as optic nerves and the nervous system itself. A main part of the book was about structure and organization because Benzer and them were trying to find the genes that were influenced by the offsprings parents. By looking at different parts of the body structures they were able to tell which traits were passed on. They also looked at different body shapes and structures because it would help them determine which animal was in better use for the experiments they were doing.