Exam Review Sheet
Honors Biology
Chapter 20
1. What is recombinant DNA technology? Give an example.
2. Describe genomics.
3. Describe the three ways by which bacteria can transfer or pick up DNA and make it their own.
4. Explain how to do a transformation in the laboratory.
5. The describe the structure of a plasmid, where they are found and how they are useful to humans in terms of recombinant DNA technology.
6. What is an R plasmid?
7. Explain in detail how you would have E. coli bacteria make human hexokinase for you. Do not forget about the problem that introns pose. You need to discuss the plasmic, restriction enzymes, sticky ends, restriction site, transformation, ligation, reverse transcriptase, cDNA (complementary DNA), etc…
8. What is meant by biotechnology?
9. Where are restriction enzymes found in nature and how do scientists use the as tools in the laboratory? What kinds of sequences do they cut? What is meant by a “sticky end”? Blunt end?
10. How is inserting a gene into a plasmid and putting that plasmid into a bacterium useful?
11. A person comes to you and wants you to determine who their daddy is. Explain in detail how you would do this. Be sure to include PCR, gel electrophoresis, DNA fingerprint, etc…
12. Make sure you are able to do the gel electrophoresis problems in the PowerPoints. I will likely ask you to draw a gel and show how some samples run.
13. Explain how to do PCR in detail. You should know everything that needs to go in the tube, why you need primers, where you get primers, why temperatures shift, why we use Taq polymerase, etc…
14. What does PCR do for you, and how it is useful to us in a practical sense?
15. What is a telomere? How many genes are estimated to be in the human genome? How much of the human genome is non-coding (“junk” DNA)?
16. What is meant by “junk” DNA? Is it really junk?
17. What was the human genome project?
18. What is meant by a DNA fingerprint, and why do we all have a different DNA fingerprint?
19. What is a “pharm” animal?
20. Explain how bacteria can be used to make insulin to treat humans with diabetes.
21. What is meant by a GMO (genetically modified organism)? Give examples. How do GMO’s compare to transgenic organisms? Give examples of how GMO’s can be useful to humans.
22. Explain the logic behind gene therapy.
23. Sing the PCR song…hahaha!
24. What is the significance of Ti plasmids and A. tumefaciens?
25. What are RFLP’s and why are they important?
26. Explain how blue-white screening works and why we do it.
27. Explain why it is best to cut a vector with two different restriction enzymes as opposed to just one when subcloning a gene.
28. Explain how, after transformation, you can easily identify the bacteria that have your vector with insert.
29. What gene does ampr code for? What about lacZ?
30. Understand figure 20.5, a second method that can be used to identify colonies containing your insert aside from blue-white screening.
31. What is a bacterial colony?
32. What reaction does reverse transcriptase catalyze? Where is this enzyme found?
33. Look at Figure 20.10. See if you can figure out how we can observe very specific DNA fragments in a gel when many, many other fragments are present. Obviously, ethidium bromide or SYBR green will not work as all of the DNA fragments are stained. We just want to observe a few specific pieces…you can do this.
34. Figure 20.12 shows how we sequence DNA using dideoxy nucleotides. Try and figure out how this works. You should be able to do this with your current knowledge base.
35. Figure 20.14 shows what is called a DNA microarray. This techniques is VERY useful for determining the genes that are being transcribed (therefore turned on) in a given cell. Figure out how this works.