Paper on WWII essays

Paper on WWII essays In A Bridge to Far the Allies try to end World War II by dropping soldiers behind enemy lines and cut off supply lines. The movie goes into great detail of the confusion and power struggles amongst the leaders of the allies. In 1944, the German armies were being pushed back across the Low Countries. The Allies' great strategic problem was the Rhine, the wide river which formed Germany's western border. A daring plan was conceived which would overcome the Rhine obstacle and open the road to Berlin. Market Garden, as the plan was codenamed, involved parachuting spearhead units onto the great bridges over the Rhine and securing them for the critical few hours it would take for an armored column to drive up and relieve them. It is easy now to point to the flaws in Market Garden, but at the time it looked like a daring and viable alternative to slogging it out against the Siegfried Line. No-one had anticipated that the Dutch people would pour out onto the streets in throngs, thinking th at they had been liberated, and thus slowing down the armor. The intelligence indications of heavily-equipped German units in the zone were ignored because they were inconvenient and from outside the intelligence community. Critically, the plan allowed for only one single road to be available to the Irish Guards for the key northward push. The film illustrates very effectively the way in which a plan can develop its own momentum, regardless of the shortcomings which riddle it. The sequence of the boarding and dropping of the paratroops is an excellent scene, as is the German ambush which delays the progress of the armored column. A Bridge to Far was an excellent display of what happened with the plan itself, but it also went into great detail of the behind the scenes actions of the leaders, giving the viewer a better concept of the power ladder for the allies. The historical quality of the movie appears to be very genuine, from the armor ...

Synonymous vs. Nonsynonymous Mutations - Definitions

Synonymous vs. Nonsynonymous Mutations - Definitions Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the carrier of all the genetic information in a living thing. DNA is like a blueprint for what genes an individual has and the characteristics the individual shows (the genotype and phenotype, respectively). The processes by which DNA is translated using Ribonucleic acid (RNA) into a protein is called transcription and translation. DNAs message is copied by messenger RNA during transcription and then that message is decoded during translation to make amino acids. Strings of amino acids are then put together in the right order to make proteins that express the right genes. This is an intricate process that happens quickly, so there are bound to be mistakes, most of which are caught before they are made into proteins, but some slip through the cracks. Some of these mutations are minor and do not change anything. These DNA mutations are called synonymous mutations. Others can change the gene that is expressed and the phenotype of the individual. Mutations that do change the amino acid, and usually the protein, are called nonsynonymous mutations. Synonymous Mutations Synonymous mutations are point mutations, meaning they are just a miscopied DNA nucleotide that only changes one base pair in the RNA copy of the DNA. A codon in RNA is a set of three nucleotides that encode a specific amino acid. Most amino acids have several RNA codons that translate into that particular amino acid. Most of the time, if the third nucleotide is the one with the mutation, it will result in coding for the same amino acid. This is called a synonymous mutation because, like a synonym in grammar, the mutated codon has the same meaning as the original codon and therefore does not change the amino acid. If the amino acid does not change, then the protein is also unaffected. Synonymous mutations do not change anything and no changes are made. That means they have no real role in the evolution of species since the gene or protein is not changed in any way. Synonymous mutations are actually fairly common, but since they have no effect, then they are not noticed. Nonsynonymous Mutations Nonsynonymous mutations have a much greater effect on an individual than a synonymous mutation. In a nonsynonymous mutation, there is usually an insertion or deletion of a single nucleotide in the sequence during transcription when the messenger RNA is copying the DNA. This single missing or added nucleotide causes a frameshift mutation which throws off the entire reading frame of the amino acid sequence and mixes up the codons. This usually does affect the amino acids that are coded for and change the resulting protein that is expressed. The severity of this kind of mutation depends on how early in the amino acid sequence it happens. If it happens near the beginning and the entire protein is changed, this could become a lethal mutation. Another way a nonsynonymous mutation can occur is if the point mutation changes the single nucleotide into a codon that does not translate into the same amino acid. A lot of times, the single amino acid change does not affect the protein very much and is still viable. If it happens early in the sequence and the codon is changed to translate into a stop signal, then the protein will not be made and it could cause serious consequences. Sometimes nonsynonymous mutations are actually positive changes. Natural selection may favor this new expression of the gene and the individual may have developed a favorable adaptation from the mutation. If that mutation occurs in the gametes, this adaptation will be passed down to the next generation of offspring. Nonsynonymous mutations increase the diversity in the gene pool for natural selection to work on and drive evolution on a microevolutionary level.