Exam 4 Review – some helpful hints
The closed-book exam will consist of matching and multiple choice questions which draw from your
knowledge, intelligence and creativity. Know the material below and you will be in great shape for the
upcoming exam!
-----------------Understand the concepts of conjugation, transformation, transfection, conjujgation.
What did Chargaff prove with his experiment? Hershey-Chase? Meselson-Stahl?
What is the function of primase, DNA ligase, DNA polymerase, Topoisomerase, helicase, Okazaki
fragment, leading strand, lagging strand?
What is the function of RNA polymerse, primase?
What direction are new DNA and RNA (Nucleic Acids) polymerized?
What is telomerase? What does it do? Why is it important? What does it have to do with cancer?
Understand how DNA compacts and expands (becomes more dense and less dense). What causes it?
What is heterochromatin? Euchromatin? What impact does this have on RNA synthesis?
What are the levels of organization of chromatin? What is a nucleosome, a chromatin fiber, a looped
domain? What are histones?
What is the composition of DNA and RNA; how do they differ (type of sugar, Uracil or Thymine, single
or double stranded; transfer, message, ribosomal)?
What is a nucleoside; a nucleotide? How do they differ?
Understand how to interpret the Genetic Code. i.e. if I give you a genetic sequence, be able to convert it
to protein. I will provide a table for converting codons to amino acids.
Eukaryotes have 3 types of RNA polymerase. What types of RNA do they produce?
What is the difference between introns and exons in DNA?
Be able to interpret the structure of a tRNA (a figure of tRNA will be provided for you). What is the
complementary codon for the tRNA’s anticodon?
Understand (in general) the sequence of events during the elongation of a polypeptide during
protein synthesis (translation).
How much energy (in terms of ATP) is required to produce a 200 amino acid protein?
What is a frameshift mutation? An insertion? A deletion? A substitution? Missense, Nonsense,
Silent mutation?
What is an operon, promoter, inducer, repressor, corepressor?
Be able to interpret figures containing the Lac and Trp operons.
At what level is gene expression regulated?
Understand the concept of RNA interference.
What is the driving force behind cellular differentiation?
What are stem cells? In short; what do they do?
Why does the incidence of cancer increase with age?
What are the processes of transcription and translation? How does it differ in prokaryotes and
eukaryotes?
What is mature mRNA? How is mRNA modified in eukaryotes?
What stabilizes mature mRNA?
What is the difference between adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and deoxyadenosine triphosphate
(dATP)?
Understand the general structure of a virus. How does the size of the genome relate to the size of
the virus?
Why is a virus an obligate parasite?
What is the viral lytic cycle? Lysogenic cycle?
Why do viruses have a higher rate of mutation than prokaryotes or eukaryotes?
What is Reverse Transcriptase enzyme?
What are the differences between viriods and viruses?
What are prions?
Understand the concept of restriction endonuclease digestion. What does the enzyme “ligase”
do?
What is the sequence of steps occurring during every cycle of the polymerase chain reaction
(PCR)?
What is agarose gel electrophoresis? What is it used for?
What is a Northern Assay? Southern Assay? Western Assay?
Understand the ethical issues concerning cloning (reproductive vs therapeutic).
What is translocation? How does it effect the genesis of cancer?