A. Factual knowledge
Please describe, briefly, two new, distinct pieces of factual knowledge that you acquired or developed since the last learning journal
I learned that XIST and Xist is responsible for X chromosome inactivation (XCI) in humans and mice, respectively. This long noncoding RNA coats the X chromosome to inactivate it.
I learned that there are certain histone modifications that are involved with activating genes (H4ac) and inactivating genes (H3K9me3).
B. Conceptual knowledge
Since connections and models make for conceptual knowledge… please describe any connections (direct or indirect) that you can see between the two pieces of knowledge described in A.
Histone modifications involved in inactivating genes are important for XCI. H3K9me3 is found on the promoter of Xist in mice in order to prevent the expression of Xist, which will inactivate an X chromosome. The modifications are lost during development in order to allow XCI.
C. Metacognitive knowledge (no skills this time!)
If you are like most students in the class, you probably spent a significant amount of time reading, studying, and dissecting the article assigned for MT2.
- Please describe, briefly, the strategy that you employed to complete the task.
First, I quickly read through the paper once to get a feel of the paper. The second time I look at each figure and try to annotate what they observed and concluded. I also underline the results and the conclusion
- Thinking about your experience with reading and dissecting this article, what was the hardest part?
There was a lot to keep track of since there were so many experiments and figures. It’s sometimes hard to see the overall picture of the entire paper.
- Thinking about your experience with reading and dissecting this article this article, what did you feel most comfortable with/confident about? Why do you think that is?
I was most comfortable with understanding the difference between inner cell mass and the trophectoderm cells because it was something discussed it in class and I actually understood the difference in XCI between these two types of cells.