Arick D. Scott's Reflection

    After hearing Dr. Dunston’s lecture, I was left with a few deep thoughts. I fully understand the concept of genes being the overall coding for life and inheritance. Genes, in general, play a huge part in life. Genes are nucleotides that control the transmission of traits from one cell to another. This is obviously directly related to life. Similar to Dr. Carr, Dr. Dunston refers to Africa as “Mother Africa.” I believe that this is a way of indirectly stating that she too believes that life originates from the continent of Africa. The idea of human inheritance and traits has always amazed me because the traits are usually obvious within the heirs. For example, human babies tend to have features that favor one of their parents or evenly favor both. When someone says that a baby looks just like their parents, they are referring to the general traits of the individual. So, in a way, one could say that the presence of similarities from one being to another is simply a reflection of inherited genes, the coding of natural life. Amongst the deep thoughts, that I began to conjure after the lecture, were a few lingering questions that stood out. Where do genes start? For example, if life originated from prokaryotic cells, then how did cells develop so many chromosomes to pass on traits from one cell to another? Did evolution simply take place and features simply arose from mere inexistence to existence? Did features such as; facial features, height, and complexion originate from thin air or were there actually single cells with the genetic encoding for such features to be passed down even though thus cell didn’t represent the physical features itself? Besides these few thoughts, I feel as though I learned something new and exciting from Dr. Dunston.