This year marks the 110th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. TOM GALLAHUE and ROBERT POOLE from Educators for a United Ireland discuss the role played by the Irish diaspora, and why the Rising remains relevant today
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What makes a cat tick
Let's focus on how the genetic code provides the toolbox for the myriad possibilities in any person, or cat for that matter
LUCK OF THE DRAW: Two copies of the eumelanin inhibiting gene gives a completely orange cat
[GPS 56/Creative Commons]
On the 110th anniversary of the Easter Rising, Ireland stands at another historic crossroads, writes DECLAN KEARNEY of Sinn Fein
Volunteers have helped revive a pool steeped in England’s rural past and now bursting with life. MARK SEDDON takes a look
RHUN AP IORWERTH outlines Plaid Cymru’s immediate and medium-term policy goals
A row over Trotskyist factions exposes competing visions of organisation inside Your Party and the wider left, argues NICK WRIGHT
A growing coalition, Cymru Together, is challenging traditional politics – calling for practical plans that connect climate action with economic justice, writes BETHAN SAYED
THE DNA of domestic cats is bundled up into 38 chromosomes. Each chromosome is a long, tightly packed string of DNA that contains many different genes. The concept of a “gene” as a discrete unit of heredity dates back to before the discovery of DNA.
In the 20th century, it was realised that some regions of DNA are operated on by molecular machines in the cell, turning their encoded sequence into RNA and then into proteins, short-lived molecules that are involved in almost all cellular processes.
These DNA regions are what we now call genes. There is some nuance in this: for example, some regions of a gene are not turned into protein themselves and instead play a role in how exactly this happens.
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