Learning Journals are a tool commonly used in professional schools (medical school, nursing school, teacher college, etc.) and in the humanities both to help learners engage in metacognition and to help instructors evaluate students’ learning.

Think about the work you did for BIOL463 so far (in and out of class, formally and informally), then try to address each question to the best of your abilities. You can then copy and paste your answers in your wordpress blog. Please do not build a new page, but rather add this LJ above or below your LJ1 entry.

One new (or ‘improved’) concept

Now that we have looked a variety of experiments and techniques (e.g. honeybee papers, techniques presentations), some epigenetics mechanisms, the effects and characteristics of boundaries/insulators, etc., identify and briefly describe one concept that is either new for you, or that you understand better or in a new way.

How insulators can regulate gene expression is a brand new concept for me. Before this course, I only knew of transcription factors, enhancers, or inhibitors regulating gene expression but never insulators. How insulators work is they can flank the coding region of a gene, or exist directly adjacent to a gene and block effects of any nearby enhancers on that gene. The result of having an activated insulator is decreased or completely silenced transcription of the gene. How insulators can be activated or deactivated is through their methylation or demethylation. The effect of methyl groups added to an insulator can differ case to case (sometimes activate and sometimes deactivate).

Thinking about your new or ‘improved’ concept

How did you identify your new or ‘improved’ concept? How did you decide that it is a concept (and not, for example, a fact or a skill or a technique)?

What made you realize/decide that you understand it better or in a new way?

Do you think having a good understanding of this concept is important and/or useful? Why/how?

I identified insulators as a new concept because never before have I seen a molecule or component of the genome act to ‘block’ the effects of another transcription regulator. Normally I have seen mechanisms that either directly enhance or directly inhibit transcription. However, this is the first time I have seen interactions between components to produce a result (change in gene expression).

I realized I understood the concept of insulators when I was able to predict the expression of a gene in two different situations: one with an active insulator and one  with an inactive insulator, where both had enhancers for the gene nearby.

Having a good understanding of insulators is useful because it helps us understand another one of the many ways in which gene transcription is regulated.  When assessing data of gene expression levels under varying conditions, having insulators present in the expression mechanism could give rise to particular results. Knowledge of this concept can help us interpret experimental data with much more accuracy.