full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Spencer Wells: A family tree for humanity
Unscramble the Blue Letters
These are two pieces of DNA that we use quite widely in our work. Mitochondrial DNA, tcnriag a purely mtneraal line of descent. You get your mtDNA from your mother, and your mother's mother, all the way back to the very first woman. The Y chromosome, the piece of DNA that makes men men, treacs a purely paternal line of descent. Everybody in this room, everybody in the world, fllas into a lineage somewhere on these teres. Now, even though these are simplified versions of the real trees, they're still kind of complicated, so let's simplify them. Turn them on their sides, combnie them so that they look like a tree with the root at the bottom and the branches going up. What's the take-home maesgse?
Open Cloze
These are two pieces of DNA that we use quite widely in our work. Mitochondrial DNA, _______ a purely ________ line of descent. You get your mtDNA from your mother, and your mother's mother, all the way back to the very first woman. The Y chromosome, the piece of DNA that makes men men, ______ a purely paternal line of descent. Everybody in this room, everybody in the world, _____ into a lineage somewhere on these _____. Now, even though these are simplified versions of the real trees, they're still kind of complicated, so let's simplify them. Turn them on their sides, _______ them so that they look like a tree with the root at the bottom and the branches going up. What's the take-home _______?
Solution
- falls
- message
- combine
- trees
- traces
- tracing
- maternal
Original Text
These are two pieces of DNA that we use quite widely in our work. Mitochondrial DNA, tracing a purely maternal line of descent. You get your mtDNA from your mother, and your mother's mother, all the way back to the very first woman. The Y chromosome, the piece of DNA that makes men men, traces a purely paternal line of descent. Everybody in this room, everybody in the world, falls into a lineage somewhere on these trees. Now, even though these are simplified versions of the real trees, they're still kind of complicated, so let's simplify them. Turn them on their sides, combine them so that they look like a tree with the root at the bottom and the branches going up. What's the take-home message?
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
million years |
4 |
ice age |
4 |
african continent |
3 |
common ancestry |
3 |
alive today |
3 |
whirlwind tour |
2 |
big scientific |
2 |
extinct species |
2 |
skull shape |
2 |
eighteenth century |
2 |
human races |
2 |
physical anthropologists |
2 |
homo erectus |
2 |
family tree |
2 |
haploid genome |
2 |
billion nucleotides |
2 |
gave rise |
2 |
stone tools |
2 |
thousand years |
2 |
african success |
2 |
middle east |
2 |
meat locker |
2 |
national geographic |
2 |
legacy fund |
2 |
Important Words
- bottom
- branches
- chromosome
- combine
- complicated
- descent
- dna
- falls
- kind
- line
- lineage
- maternal
- men
- message
- mitochondrial
- mother
- mtdna
- paternal
- piece
- pieces
- purely
- real
- room
- root
- sides
- simplified
- simplify
- traces
- tracing
- tree
- trees
- turn
- versions
- widely
- woman
- work
- world