Week nine

Assignments for Week Nine - The Chemistry of Life

• The ethics of “gene therapy”

I have strong dislikes of anything that is manipulated when it comes to gene. I believe whatever happens to the gene. The most natural way is to let it be. However, if it helps the ones to recover from severe diseases. I am with the opinion that it should be promoted.

• Animation of General, Organic and Biochemistry

I picked several ones but the one about Lipids was interesting. There were so many names we meet everywhere these days - books, magazines, journals...... such as fatty acids and that they are divided in saturated and unsaturated , oleic and linoleic acid, prostaglandins, explained why the prolonged use of aspirin is inhibited to those who have stomach ulcers, that waxes are an ester of a fatty acid and a long chain of alcohol, that sphingolipids are not derived from fat and the nerve tissue is made of this especially the myelin sheath, also that in people 25 % of all the lipids are sphingolipids. The

LDL effect of gene coding that allows too much cholesterol to the plasma and that the excess cholesterol gets accumulated on the arteries resulting in atherosclerosis

• Definitions of the “Chemistry of Life”

- I like the definition below the most. " bridge between biology and chemistry that studies how complex chemical reactions give rise to life. "