As a family, helping needy children, hospice homes, nursing homes, street families and orphanages had been part of weekend activities at the beginning of every month. On July, just before we got to the climax of summer, my parents decided that we ought to visit an orphanage where we could should our benediction. The orphanage was to be St. Paul’s Childcare and Support. After arriving at this place, my parents decided that that day was to be a unique and that the way we give out presents such as clothes, food stuff, shoes or anything we had, had to be unique. Me and my siblings stood there shocked waiting to see the big surprise which was to be unveiled in the criteria of issuing presents to these needy children. My dad said that when it comes to giving out shoes, we would do it inform of a game. We had 5 different shoes based on color. These included red, white, green, blue, and black. After showing us the new shoes, he said the kids had to follow some instructions before getting them. He called out the kids and gave the following instructions.
Select one kid who will pick one shoe for each pair.
The kid must follow the color complements stipulated for every shoe.
After picking the shoes, the kid should go out with them and wait for other instructions.
After my dad gave out those set of instructions, he took a fraction of the red, white, green and blue shoes and arranged them in a linear line. The remaining fraction of the four shoes was set aside in a heap because the space of the room could not accommodate a whole linear line of the four types and also the kids would not have received any shoe if all of them were used in the linear arrangement. Also, the black shoes were mixed with this fraction to form the heap. At this point, everything had been ready from my dad’s side and it only required the selected kid to initiate the process of giving shoes. Once the kid was selected, she was directed to a room that contained the patterned shoes. The kids found confidence in Nelly, a girl, who would represent them in the whole process of receiving shoes. After getting inside, Nelly was asked to pick a white shoe from the heap for every red shoe she saw on the linear line and vice versa. Also, she was to pick a black shoe for every green shoe she came across in the linear line and a green shoe for every blue shoe in linear pattern. The process was to begin from a specific end to another so that directionality could be observed. Also, this had to be done for every shoe in the line.
Nelly began the exercise with a steady pace and 98% error free. Since carrying the shoes would tire Nelly so early, my dad asked nelly to arrange the picked shoes in a linear line also so that she can lighten her burden and also observe any mistakes she would have made after the whole process of receiving shoes. On the other hand, Nelly observed every guideline and the process went smoothly, picking a white shoe for every red shoe and a black shoe for every green shoe. After she was done with picking, my dad asked her to check whether there are any mistakes in the pattern she had made. Nelly, observed keenly and ensured that her pattern was error free. Once she was done, she was asked to get the shoes outside and place them at a specific point without interfering with pattern. Being as a human with two arms, she had to carry a pair at a time and reforming the pattern again while outside. Once outside, my dad issued another set of instructions to the kids. These included:
Selecting a kid who would read a pattern of three consecutive shoes, compare the pattern with what my dad had written in a piece of paper and decide what shoes the pattern represented.
Selecting kid who is energetic and would hold a box of the now complete pair of shoes on one hand and the paper containing the patterns in the other hand.
Selecting a kid who can be able to read a pattern formed by three single shoes on Nelly’s pattern.
After giving the kids some time to decide, they chose Jared, who was a tall, masculine guy with a history record of becoming the best student in his high school. That meant he was able to read and reason accordingly. My dad handed Jared the piece of paper and asked him to:
First read the sequence of the first three single shoes on Nelly’s pattern.
Look for the pattern in the paper given. The paper had 64 three-single patterns.
Decide what shoes (complete set/pair) to give to a child.
Jared went ahead and did exactly what the instructions required him to do. The first sequence was RRG. After checking the sequence on the paper, he found out that this sequence represented a box of Balenciaga. He took the Balenciaga and gave it to the first kid. He repeated the activity again until the he finished reading Nelly’s single shoe pattern. The process went ahead until the Reebok, Fila, Nike, Jordan’s and other types that we had were given out.
The process above resembles transcription and translation. The linear pattern formed by my dad is exactly the same as the DNA pattern formed after uncoiling in preparation of transcription. The room that my dad went to form the pattern is the nucleus of the cell where transcription usually occurs. On the other hand, Nelly represents mRNA which carries the genetic codes from the nucleus to the cytosol for translation or protein formation. The mRNA is usually formed in the nucleus and consists of almost similar bases with those of DNA except for uracil which substitutes thymine in DNA (Artsimovitch, 2018). The mRNA also consists of complement bases which are uracil for adenine, guanine for cytosine and adenine for thymine. These are represented by the red, green, blue and white shoes present in my dad’s sequence. Nelly had a black shoe which was absent in my dad’s sequence and this is the uracil found in RNAs. After the process of transcription, the mRNA moves to the cytosol and specifically to the ribosomes where it fixes between the 60s and 40s subunits (Baxter et al., 2018). At the ribosome, another class of RNA joins the ribosome complex. This is the tRNA which carries amino acids and also reads the codons present on mRNA. A codon is formed by three consecutive bases. And anticodon is the part on the tRNA that complements the codon on the mRNA and gives a direction on what amino acid to
Transcription and translation
