A-Level Biology Specification

AQA 7402

Section 4.7: Investigating diversity

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#4.7.1

Genetic diversity within, or between species, can be made by comparing:

- the frequency of measurable or observable characteristics
- the base sequence of DNA
- the base sequence of mRNA
- the amino acid sequence of the proteins encoded by DNA and mRNA.

#4.7.2

Students should be able to:

- interpret data relating to similarities and differences in the base sequences of DNA and in the amino acid sequences of proteins to suggest relationships between different organisms within a species and between species
- appreciate that gene technology has caused a change in the methods of investigating genetic diversity; inferring DNA differences from measurable or observable characteristics has been replaced by direct investigation of DNA sequences.

Knowledge of gene technologies will not be tested.

#4.7.3

Quantitative investigations of variation within a species involve:

- collecting data from random samples
- calculating a mean value of the collected data and the standard deviation of that mean
- interpreting mean values and their standard deviations.

Students will not be required to calculate standard deviations in written papers.