Bacterial Genetics Flashcards
(50 cards)
Point mutations
A single change to one base of the DNA
Also called a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)
- missense
- silent
- nonsense
Frameshift
- Insertion
- Deletion
The mistake rate for DNA polymerase in bacteria is _______ million nucleotides
1/100
1% of new bacterial cells will have a mutation
Missense
base change will change the amino acid that is coded for at that codon
Silent
Base change will not change the amino acid that is coded for at that codon
Nonsense
Base change will change codon into a stop codon
this is the most significant causing change of the three
A codon encodes ____ amino acid
one
sometimes more than one codon encodes the same amino acid
Nonsense mutation lead to __________ protein
truncated
because they stop shorter than intended, the stop codon comes faster
Frame shift
coding for different codons because of one wrong or an added base to the 3 base pairings for a codon
Frame shifts happen when 1 or 2 bases in the reading frame is either removed or inserted
Insertion vs Deletion frameshift mutation
Insertion: added base to the reading frame
Deletion: base taken away from the reading frame
Transposon
A genetic element that can jump (transpose) from one piece of DNA to another
- Within the transposon there can be many genes, and one of those genes is usually a transposase
If the transposon is inserted at a gene it will disrupt the gene
Transposase
the enzyme that helps the transposon move
cuts a target DNA sequence and then inserts the transposon
How can the transposon move?
- From a plasmid to the chromosome
- From chromosome onto a plasmid
-Around the genome
Observed mutation rate
The number of mutations that are occurring vs the efficiency of repair mechanisms
E.coli has lots of molecular mechanisms to repair mutations (2)
- error free repair
- error prone
Error-free repair
Deals with mismatched bases or chemically modified bases, complementary DNA stand is there to direct a perfect pair
Error-prone
Coping with massive DNA damage, such as numerous double strand breaks, missing bases, no complementary strand is available for DNA Pol to copy
It is done by the DNA polymerase V
But imperfect repair is better than death
If a mutation can be repaired before the cell divides, offspring _____ be mutant!
won’t
Hemimethylated DNA
Many bacteria methylate their DNA (either A or C)
- It takes time to methylate the DNA, therefore after replication the new strand will be unmethylated at first
Why methylate?
- recognize incoming foreign DNA
- Can tell new from old strand - target repair to new strand (methyl mismatch repair system)
MutHSL recognizes a mismatched base pair, clips the backbone of non-methylated strand near mismatch removes a piece of one strand, DNA Pol I repairs, ligase closes
SOS response to massive DNA damage
- Stop cell divison (and sometimes metabolism as a whole
- Enhanced excision repair
Transleasion repair
repair with no DNA template as a guide using error prone DNA polymerase
*error prone DNA polymerase (Pol V) is encoded by the umuCD genes
Recombination
different regions of similar DNA sequences that are separated by a gene can base pair with each other
This can result in swapping DNA sequences so that gene x is removed
Recombination repair
- during replication, damaged DNA that cannot be recognized by DNA pol III will be skipped over and not replicated
- SSB proteins will cover these ssDNA regions
- RecA binds to SSB proteins- bound to single strand DNA
- Finds a homologous sequences in the other copy of the chromsome and initiates strand invasion to repair the gap in a “X” manner
- Original damaged bases are subsequently repaired with other mechanisms