producing DNA fragments

Question 1

what has recombinant DNA technology enabled us to do

Answer 1

1) understand how organisms work
2) design new industrial processes
3) medical applications

Question 2

problems present with insulin technology

Answer 2

1) costly
2) rejection by the immune system
3) risk of infection

Question 3

recombinant DNA

Answer 3

the DNA of two different organisms that has been combined

Question 4

genetically modified organism (GMO)

Answer 4

organism that is a result of recombinant DNA

Question 5

the stages of the process of making a protein using the DNA technology of gene transfer and cloning

Answer 5

1) isolation
2) insertion
3) transformation
4) identification
5) growth/cloning

Question 6

1) isolation

Answer 6

• isolation of DNA fragments that have the gene that codes for the desired and specific protein

Question 7

2) insertion

Answer 7

• insertion of DNA fragment along with promotor and terminator regions into a vector

Question 8

vector

Answer 8

a small piece of DNA that can be stably maintained in an organism, and into which a foreign DNA fragment can be inserted for cloning purposes.
it may be DNA taken from:
- a virus
- plasmid of a bacterium.

Question 9

3) transformation

Answer 9

• the transfer of DNA into suitable host cells

Question 10

4) identification

Answer 10

• identification of the host that have successfully taken up the gene by the use of gene markers

Question 11

5) growth/cloning

Answer 11

• growth/cloning of the population of host cells

Question 12

two important enzymes for this technology

Answer 12

1) reverse transcriptase

2) restriction endonucleases

Question 13

what is a retrovirus

Answer 13

• type of viruses that synthesise viral DNA from their viral RNA using enzyme reverse transcriptase to catalyse the synthesis

Question 14

process of using enzyme reverse transcriptase to isolate a gene

Answer 14

1) a cell that readily produces the desired protein is selected
2) the cell has large quantities of relevant mRNA that codes for the desired gene, which is extracted
3) mRNA strand acts as a tempelate strand for free nucleotides to join via complementary base pairing, using hydrogen bonds
4) reverse transcriptase is then used to join these strands and make DNA from mRNA
5) DNA produced is called cDNA
6) DNA helicase unzips and unwinds the doube stranded cDNA
6) new DNA made using cDNA as a tempelate strand during DNA replication