The life of Lucy

This story is about the life of a chimp named Lucy. But Lucy’s life is nothing like a normal chimp’s life. Lucy was raised by humans. And eventually starts to learn and act like a human in different ways.  And because Lucy was not raised by the same species her life proved to be much harder. She learned to think of her human guardians as her parents. And she started participating in human activities.

                The biggest thing that Lucy started doing after being raised by humans was communication. She was able to sign with other humans and actually keep a conversation going. She learned over 250 sign in total. At one point in time Lucy was caught masturbating to a playgirl magazine. This shows she had a sexual attraction to other male humans. Because Lucy was raised in a human household she had the power to learn so many new things that she would not have learned in the wild

                By listening to this podcast it can be concluded that Lucy had gone through an extremely different life and was almost unable to cope in a real world scenario when she was released. Her life had to of been extremely confusing for her. But she was able to do things that other chimps would never do.

Innocence Project

         James Brain was convicted for the rape of a 9 year old boy and was sentenced to life in prison. The boy's mother thought that he matched her son's description and his picture was added to a line up, this is when the nine year old boy wrongly accused james brain of raping him. James was 19 years old when he was sent to prison and served 35 years there, when he was exonerated he was 54 years old. James requested DNA testing several times but was denied in 2001, 2003 , and 2006. His case was accepted by The Innocence Project Florida where he was proven innocent. when James was convicted DNA testing was not available and why he was proven guilty when not. Recently DNA testing has become much more practical and possible. through the advancements in DNA testing we are able to identify any human through their genomic DNA. We are able to match the perpetrators DNA if found with the accused to see if the accused really did commit the crime. This significantly improves the chances of the justice system convicting the true perpetrator. I think that the justice system before DNA testing, was not always reliable and that they have put many people wrongfully in prison. The reason that these people are wrongfully convicted varies with each case but at sometimes can be completely outrageous. In the couple of cases that I have heard about it seems like it is either the police officer working on that cases fault or the witness/victims fault. Even with that said it could be an honest mistake made by one of those people to suggest that that person is guilty.

The outline of the progression of DNA technologies

·      1865, when Gregor Mendel was the father of Genetics.

·      1947, Erwin Chargoff found the DNA bases follow certain “rules” He also found the composition of species A=T, C=G for all species.

·      1951, Rosaland Franklin obtained sharp X-Ray diffraction photographs of DNA

·      1953, Watson and Crick description of the 3-D structure of DNA. 

·      1958, Meslson and Stahl found how DNA replication is semi-conservative.

1977- 2000 The Floodgates Open

·      1970, Smith and Nathan’s discovery of restriction endonucleases.

·      1973, Boyer, Cohen and Chang transform E. Coli with recombinant plasmid.

·      1984, Alec Jeffrey introduces technique for DNA fingerprinting to identify individuals.

·      1997, Dolly cloned from the cell of an adult ewwe, DNA microarry technology developed.

·       2000, The Drosophila genome is completed. The Arabidopsis genome is completed. The human genome is reported to be completed.