DNA, THE MOLECULE OF LIFE
BEFORE WATCHING
7 Answer the following questions.
1. Do you remember what DNA stands for?
2. Can you mention some applications of the studies on DNA?
3. Why is it called the molecule of life?
WHILE WATCHING
8 Watch the video and choose the correct answer.
1. The presence of DNA in our cells was discovered by:
- a. two researchers in 1953;
- b. several researchers throughout many years;
- c. some scientists in Cambridge;
- d. two friends
2. It seemed ..................... that all the genetic information was determined by four compounds.
- a. incredible;
- b. obvious;
- c. impossible;
- d. incorrect
3. Watson and Crick investigated the ..................... of DNa.
- a. composition
- b. history
- c. structure
- d. origin
4. The relative amount of ..................... wasn’t different from the relative amount of ..................... in all the organisms studied.
- a. guanine – cytosine;
- b. thymine – guanine;
- c. adenine – thymine;
- d. both a. and c. are correct
5. The helix structure of the DNA .....................
- a. had been known since the beginning;
- b. was explained thanks to the studies of a woman;
- c. was discovered by Erwin Chargaff;
- d. was discovered by Watson and Crick
6. The Nobel Prize for this discovery was awarded in the early .....................
- a. 1940s;
- b. 1950s;
- c. 1960s;
- d. 1970s
AFTER WATCHING
9 Watch the video again and answer the following questions.
1. In which part of the cell is DNA enclosed?
2. Can you name the four compounds which make up DNA?
3. Who was Rosalind Franklin?
4. How did she help figure out the structure of DNA?
5. What was the perfect union between adenine and thymine, and guanine and cytanine?
6. What further discoveries were made later?
7. Was Rosalind Franklin awarded the Nobel Prize?
8. Who was Morris Wilkins?
MOVING FURTHER
10 Historically, science has been a male-dominated field.****
Despite dramatic increases in representation over the last 40 years, globally fewer than 30 percent of researchers today in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers are women. Surf the Net and look for other women who have not seen their work recognized as it should have been.