Ouch! Imagine you just cut your finger. How does your body know to grow another skin cell and not a heart cell or stomach cell?

Now look at the image of the baby zebra with its mother. How did the offspring inherit its

parent’s stripes and red mane? The answer is the same for both pictures. Genes! Your body contains about 50 trillion cells, each with a set of genes that have coded for making a specific cell.

Each parent has a set of genes with coded instructions for characteristics that are passed on to their offspring. Those instructions are the blueprints of life.

Where do those instructions originate? How do they control cell structure and function?

The blueprints for cell growth, or for passing on

traits to offspring during reproduction, come from instructions inside the cell’s control center, which is called the nucleus.

Chromosomes inside the nucleus of cells are made up of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), a long, twisted, ladder-shaped molecule. DNA is the source of the coded instructions. Chromosomes are divided into short segments of DNA called genes, each with a specific purpose. Each chromosome has many different genes lined up one after the other along the chromosome. You can think of the DNA as a cookbook, and the genes are the individual recipes in that cookbook.

Genes control the production of proteins essential to cells.

Every gene has a set of instructions for making a specific set of proteins. Protein structure influences protein function (ex: the structure of some blood proteins allows them to attach to oxygen, and the structure of a normal digestive protein allows it to break down particular food

molecules).

Do you think proteins are key to your body functioning properly?

Yes! These proteins, in turn, form cells and control all processes inside cells. The sequence of DNA in your genes tells your body which proteins to make. Think of proteins as the building blocks for an organism. Proteins make up the skin, hair, and cells of the organism. If the DNA sequence is disturbed, then the formation of essential proteins can be disturbed.