Introductory Biology
Chapter 13 Review Questions (for class and for the Test):
1. What is selective breeding and how might it be used?
2. What is the real cause of all the slight variations that are seen in each species of
organism?
3. What is “inbreeding”? What are its benefits and what are its weaknesses?
4. How can mutations be used by breeders for useful purposes? How is radiation used to
create them?
5. What actually happens when a restriction enzyme produces a fragment of DNA?
6. What would happen if you used two or more restriction enzymes on the same piece of
DNA?
7. What is gel electrophoresis, and what does it used for?
8. Define “Genetic Engineering”. Define “transgenic”. How might genetic engineering be
used to produce transgenic organisms?
9. What are the many things for which transgenic organisms might be used?
10. What is the name for DNA that is made from the DNA of more than one organism?
11. What do the bands of color signify in an electrophoresis gel? The band that moves the
farthest- is that the shortest one or the longest one? What if two samples of DNA
produce the exact same bands of color in an electrophoresis gel- What does that mean?
12. What, exactly, is the process of “transformation” (in biotechnology)? How might we
know that transformation has been successful in one of our biotech experiments?
13. What is a “genetic marker” and how do biotech scientists use one? What does it show?
14. What is the real advantage in using transgenic bacteria to manufacture human proteins,
like insulin? What is the process by which scientists get bacteria to make that insulin in
the first place (step by step)?
15. What are some of the advantages of making and growing transgenic plants? What do
scientists add to plant seeds that makes them “transgenic”?
16. What is “selective breeding”, and how is it typically used?
17. What does it mean to say that a plant is “polyploid”?
18. What is “hybridization”? How do farmers or breeders use it?
19. What is a “plasmid”? Which type of cells contain plasmids?
20. Describe the process by which Dolly the sheep was cloned. Which animals in the
process have identical DNA?