Chapter 16 | DNA, RNA and Proteins

  1. Explain Griffith’s transformation experiments. What did he conclude from them?
  2. Why were radioactive sulfur and phosphorous used to label bacteriophage in Hershey and Chase’s experiments?
  3. Provide a brief summary of the Sanger sequencing method.
  4. Describe the structure and complementary base pairing of DNA.
  5. How did the scientific community learn that DNA replication takes place in a semi-conservative fashion?
  6. DNA replication is bidirectional and discontinuous; explain your understanding of those concepts.
  7. What are Okazaki fragments and how they are formed?
  8. If the rate of replication in a particular prokaryote is 900 nucleotides per second, how long would it take 1.2 million base pair genomes to make two copies?
  9. Explain the events taking place at the replication fork. If the gene for helicase is mutated, what part of replication will be affected?
  10. What is the role of a primer in DNA replication? What would happen if you forgot to add a primer in a tube containing the reaction mix for a DNA sequencing reaction?
  11. How do the linear chromosomes in eukaryotes ensure that its ends are replicated completely?
  12. What is the consequence of mutation of a mismatch repair enzyme? How will this affect the function of a gene?
  13. Imagine if there were 200 commonly occurring amino acids instead of 20. Given what you know about the genetic code, what would be the shortest possible codon length? Explain.
  14. Discuss how degeneracy of the genetic code makes cells more robust to mutations.
  15. Transcribe and translate the following DNA sequence (nontemplate strand): 5′-ATGGCCGGTTATTAAGCA-3′
  16. Explain how single nucleotide changes can have vastly different effects on protein function.

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