Up Goer Five - DNA Replication

I decided to answer the call of http://splasho.com/upgoer5/, which is inspired by XKCD’s Up Goer Five

and attempt to explain my method for replication timing classification from one of my plant genome research projects at TACC.

To find out when a cell begins to grow, we read them 3 times while they are growing. We look at each part of the cell and try to figure out which times were most important for growing. We do this by thinking about each time like the colors red, green, and blue for the early, middle, and late times. Each time is different and makes up different parts of the total. If the colors are used the same, we get a final color instead of a number total. This is the same as making new colors out of paint. If this final color is closest to red, we can say this part of the cell grows early. If the final color is new, but looks like two colors together, we know that part grows slowly during both times. After doing this to all parts of the cell, we can see which parts happen first and if they’re important for making food or just really easy.

19 Aug 2015