Moons of our solar system

By Caitlin Fernandez Antao , 9D

Our solar system is made of 8 planets that contain 219

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, Phobos being moons within them, each having different modifications to their moons that correlate to the planet that they belong to The Earth has 1 moon, Mars has 2 moons, Jupiter has 92 moons, Saturn has 83, Uranus has 28 and Neptune has 14

Our moon rotates and completes its full orbit around the earth in a total of 27 days to complete The moon has a varied amount of roles connected to Earth, for example, the moon controls the tides of our seas, how strong they are and when they come in the larger moon between the two. Both moons orbit Mars around 3 times a day Phobos contains a 6 km wide crater that has been named Stickny that was caused when a meteor crashed into it with such force that it did actually end up leaving a patterned mark all over the moon Deimos on the other hand, is only 6 3km wide meaning that it is only a bit larger than the crater on Phobos and is said to actually be moving away from Mars meaning that eventually not be in orbit of the planet at all, unlike Phobos which is said to be crashing into Mars itself

Jupiter actually has 92 moons, however the main one is named Europa. There are 4 Galilean moons that are known to be Jupiter and Europa is said to be the smallest between them even though it is the sixth largest moon in the solar system One of reasons that it is such an important moon is because of the fact that it is a possibly suitable area that humans could possibly live in in the future due to the fact that it is said to contain two times more salt-water than on the earth itself

Saturn has 83 moons, however its most important moons are Rhea and Titan, which are its two largest moons Titan is the second largest moon within our solar system and is said to be one of the only other areas in the solar system that is suitable for humans to possibly live on in the future. This is mainly because Titan contains water for humans to survive in and has a very thick atmosphere that would protect us from radiation Rhea on the other hand, is the ninth largest moon in the solar system and contains three rings like its planet Saturn that are thin and narrow

Uranus has 28 moons, its main ones being Ariel and it takes roughly 2 and a half days to orbit Ariel. It is roughly 190,000km away from the planet itself and is the fourth largest moon out of the 28 that Uranus has in total It is said to be less than 100 million years old which means that the moon may still be geographically active due to the fact that it is relatively young Fun fact - in the book the Tempest, Ariel the fairy is named after the moon of Uranus

Neptune has 14 moons, its biggest being Triton This moon was discovered in 1846 and is roughly 4 billion

What is Epigenetics?

By Rithi Bliawar, SF-HLD

In simple terms, epigenetics relates to changes (particularly heritable changes), in the gene expression of an organism, without any changes to the DNA sequence itself However unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible, and don’t change the base sequence of your DNA Our environment brings about epigenetic changes Individual factors include our diet, alcohol intake, and whether we smoke or not. External factors include pollution and radiation

Histone modification describes the adding of a chemical tag to a histone group, in order to reduce or bolster gene expression The different types include acetylation, phosphorylation, and methylation. By adding an acetyl group/methyl group/phosphorus to histone tails, genes years old which really puts the age of Ariel into perspective It is made up of 45% of volatile ice and water and is roughly 15 5% of the earth's surface area Titan also has a toxic atmosphere due to the fact that it is 95% nitrogen and 5% methane which is split apart by the sun’s ultraviolet rays People wouldn’t really be able to live there because you would still need to wear respirators to help us breathe in oxygen and survive. There were also traces of cyanide found in Triton in 1980 by the voyager sciencefocus com/space/the-solar-systems-top-20-moon s-ranked-why-because-we-can/ solarsystem nasa gov/moons/uranus-moons/ariel/in-dept h/ can be turned on or off (DNA itself can also be directly modified in the process of DNA methylation).

References: space com/15498-europa-sdcmp html#:~:text=Europa%2 0is%20one%20of%20the,of%20the%20 more%20 intriguing%20 satellites.

Histone modifications can cause short-term or long-term effects Short term effects are to continual processes such as transcription and repair. Long-term effects include heritable changes (cellular memory)

Furthermore, through the incorporation of histone variants, changes in the nucleosome structure can lead to changes in the genome function Histones carrying specific modifications can be bound by proteins that carry defined ‘binding domains’. These proteins regulate/change the function of the genomic regions that they bind to.