DNA: The Universal Code of Life

       Greetings everyone, this is Serelle McPherson coming to you to bring information from our last freshman seminar class. The lecturer was Dr. Georgia Dunston, Ph.D. The title of the lecture was Abandonment, Dismemberment, and Reawakening: The History & Legacy of Howard University. Based off the title, I was under the impression that Dr. Dunston would focus her lecture on how dismemberment from our African roots and abandonment of our principles, would lead to the reawakening of us as a people in relation to the history of Howard University. Instead the lecture took a turn into the discussion of DNA and the human genome.

       The conversation taking this turn in direction was understood since Dr. Dunston created the Genome center at Howard and the study of it is her livelihood. For those who don't understand these terms, DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, and is defined as any of various nucleic acids that are usually the molecular basis of heredity. Dr. Dunston took this definition and tweeked it to mean that DNA is the universal code of life, that is passed to each of us as individuals, and collectively with genes-- the quintessential gift of life.
       Genomes were the main focus of the discussion and because I wasn't completely aware of the meaning I decided to look it up. A genome is a full set of chromosomes; all the inheritable traits of an organism. Dr. Dunston also broke it down for us into three parts.
Genomes
       1. the amount of information it takes to describe ourselves artificially requires less than 1/10 of 1% of our total inheritance.
       2. it takes less than 2% to make all of the parts of our physical makeup.

       3. to enjoy the fullness of life, we need to be aware of the totality of our inheritance.

• Being that genomes are the inheritance of traits, it is easy to understand why we have to be aware of all that we are inheriting, because that's how we'll get to know ourselves.
• This would also include the trait of wisdom that we as people have inherited from our African heritage.

As we learned in the last lecture by Dr. Gregory Carr, wisdom is the the most important thing to African culture. Dr. Dunston touched on this subject by saying that we are in a knowledge revolution of :
       1. equality and value of knowledge
       2. quantity of knowledge
       3. speed at which knowledge is dissiminated

"Success will depend upon wisdom"... "Learning is power, but wisdom is supreme."
      
       To be quite honest, after hearing the lecture by Dr. Dunston, and even while looking over my notes, I wasn't exactly sure how it tied into the title of the lecture. I mean, we really didn't talk about abandonment of beliefs, dismemberment from African roots, or reawakening of the legacy of learning that Howard takes responsibilty for. Now after writing this blog, I suppose the connecting factor of the lecture and the title is that we can use our DNA and our genome as a reference to get us back to the African way of of cherishing wisdom ad learning. It is in our blood and our heritage, so therefore it is our inheritance and we have to claim our inheritance.

"I am on TIME"
"I am on POINT"
"I am on PURPOSE"