Test 3 Flashcards
What are the 4 characteristics that genetic material must posses?
- Must contain complex information
- Must replicate faithfully
- Must encode the phenotype
- Must have the capacity to vary
What is meant by “must contain complex information”?
The genetic material must be capable of storing large amounts of information
• instructions for the traits and functions of an organism
What is meant by genetic material “must replicate faithfully”?
• At each cell division, genetic instructions must be accurately transmitted to replicated cells.
• When organisms reproduce and pass genes to their progeny, the genetic instructions must be copied faithfully
What is meant by genetic material must “encode the phenotype”?
• genetic material has to have capacity to be expressed a a phenotype
• the products of a gene is often a protein or RNA molecule, so there must be a mechanism for genetic instructions in DNA to be copied to RNAs and proteins
What is meant by genetic material must “have the capacity to vary”?
• there must be variation with different and within species
• they must differ in their genetic makeup
Why was the discovery of the structure of DNA so important for understanding genetics?
understanding how genetic info is encoded and expressed is IMPOSSIBLE without knowing the structure of DNA
What are nucleotides?
unit of DNA or RNA
What are nucleotides made of?
Sugar, phosphate and a base
What do Chargaffs rules state?
Adenine=thymine
Guanine=cytosine
What organism did Fred Griffith use in his experiments?
streptococcus pneumoniae TYPES II and III
bacterium that causes pneumonia
What are the variants of the polysaccharide capsule?
• Rough
• Smooth
What are the characteristics of the ROUGH (R) variant in S. pneumoniae?
• does not form a polysaccharide capsule
• non-virulent
• do not kill mice
What are the characteristics of the SMOOTH (S) variant in S. pneumoniae?
• forms a polysaccharide capsule
• virulent
• kills mice
How does the smooth variant kill mice?
Because the smooth capsule protects it from the immune system
What happened when Griffith injected heat-killed IIS bacteria?
• The mice would live
• no IIIS bacteria in their blood
What happened when Griffith injected living IIR bacteria and a large amount of heat-killed IIS bacteria?
The mice got pneumonia and died
• there was IIS bacteria in blood in the heart
What did Griffith conclude?
IIR bacteria transformed using the genetic virulence of dead IIS bacteria. This produced a permanent genetic change in the bacteria
What is the transforming principle?
DNA; which is the substance responsible for transformation
What did Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty’s experiment reveal?
That the transforming substance is DNA
How did Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty do their experiment?
- Isolated the transforming substance
- enzymes that break down proteins had NO effect on the transforming substance
- Ribonuclease that destroyed RNA, had no effect
- DNase destroyed the transforming substance
What is the conclusion of the Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty experiment?
DNA is the carrier of the information for the serotype (type) and capsule (rough or smooth) production
What is a T2 bacteriophage?
A virus that infects the bacterium E. coli
How does a a bacteriophage infect a bacterial cell?
- Attaches to the outer wall of bacterial cell
- Injects it’s DNA into cell
- Bacterial chromosome break down and phage chromosome replicate
- Replicates and directs cell to synthesize phage proteins
- Phage DNA becomes encapsulated within the phage proteins
- Produce phages that lyse (break open) the cell and escape
What was the purpose of Hershey and Chase experiment?
To determine if the phage protein or the phage DNA was transmitted in phage reproduction