DNA and Heredity

Why don't a black cat and a white cat have a gray cat? It has to do with DNA and heredity. DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic Acid and is a double helix structure made out of 4 amino acids: Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, and Cytosine. DNA holds the instructions for life and is stored in things called chromosomes. Humans have 46 pairs of chromosomes in almost every cell. When parents have offspring, that offspring gets 23 pairs from each parent.

 Let us go back to the question: Why don't a black cat and a white cat have a gray cat? Let's say the cats are purebred. That means the black cat only has genes for black fur and the white cat only has genes for white cat fur. A gene is a unit of heredity. The offspring would have black fur, because the gene for black is dominant. The offspring didn't get white fur because white fur is a recessive trait. The offspring can only have the recessive trait if both parents have that trait.

Daddy- Long- Legs by Jean Webster

Daddy- Long- Legs by Jean Webster is about a 17 year old orphan named Judy Abbot who lives at the John Grier Home.  She is sent to college by an anonymous benefactor, and he will pay for her education under the condition that she write to him every month about what she is learning. For instance, she did a newspaper- like letter about Hannibal and the Punic Wars. She gives the benefactor the nickname Daddy- Long- Legs because she got a glimpse of him and saw that he had long legs.

At college Judy meets two girls: the amiable Sallie McBride and the stuck- up Julia Pendleton. They become friends and have adventures together, like when they walked up a hill at the crack of dawn to see the sun rise. She also meets Julia’s uncle, Jervis Pendleton, who is the exact opposite of Julia.

In the summer, Judy goes to a farm called Lock Willow, at the request of Daddy- Long- Legs. There she has a lot of adventures, such as fishing with Jervis Pendleton.

  
I would highly recommend this book. It was really funny, and I liked it a lot. I also liked how the book ended.