Exam 5 Review
Supplemental Instruction
IowaStateUniversity / Leader: / Matt C.
Course: / Biol/Gen 313
Instructor: / Dr. Myers & Dr. Vollbrecht
Date: / 04/27/2017

Introduction: Chapters 15, 17, and 18 are covered on this exam.

Multiple Choice

  1. Why does a cloning vector need an origin?
  2. To provide a promoter site for transcribing the cloned gene.
  3. To facilitate conjugation.
  4. To allow the vector to be replicated within the bacterium.
  5. To promote excision by a virus to allow transduction to occur.
  6. None of the above.
  1. What can SNPs help determine?
  2. The genetic basis of a disease.
  3. The relatedness of two individuals.
  4. An evolutionary phylogenetic tree.
  5. Chromosome mapping.
  6. Multiple of the above are true.
  1. Which of these can describe a characteristic that is quantitatively binary?
  2. Meristic.
  3. Continuous.
  4. Threshold.
  5. Discontinuous.
  6. None of the above.
  1. Given the following data, determine the variance in clutch size.

Nest 1 / Nest 2 / Nest 3 / Nest 4 / Nest 5 / Nest 6
Clutch Size / 7 / 2 / 2 / 4 / 5 / 4
  1. 1.5
  2. 1.8
  3. 3.0
  4. 3.6
  5. None of these.
  1. Which of the following could be the sequence on one strand of dsDNA at a restriction site?

  1. ACTAGT
  2. CGTTGC
  3. AATAAA
  4. GGGGGG
  5. Multiple of these.

  1. In a population of 200, there are 32 individuals with genotype TT for gene locus T. Which of the following genotype counts could exist at Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in this example?

  1. 32 tt
  2. 96 Tt
  3. 64 Tt
  4. 72 tt
  5. Multiple of these.

  1. Approximate the narrow-sense heritability of trait W given the following.

VI / VG / VD
Variance / 62 / 224 / 106
  1. Less than 0.26
  2. 0.28
  3. 0.47
  4. Greater than 0.75
  5. Not enough information is given.

  1. Beginning with two inbred flies with extreme wing dysmorphia, a cross was made producing F1 progeny with intermediate average wing length. Specifically, the original parent flies had wing lengths of 0.6 mm and 2.0 mm, respectively, and the F1 flies had wing lengths of 1.3 mm. In the ensuing F1 cross producing the F2 generation, 300 individuals grew to adulthood and exhibited wing lengths varying from 0.7 to 1.9 mm. How many genes would you expect to be involved in controlling this trait?

  1. Less than 3
  2. 3 or more
  3. 4 or less
  4. More than 4
  5. This can’t be determined.

  1. Which of these requires a model predicted from recombination rates to use?
  2. Illumina sequencing.
  3. Pyrosequencing.
  4. Shotgun sequencing.
  5. Map-based sequencing.
  6. Multiple of the above.
  1. When performing a test with a microarray, radioactively-labelled NTPs are added to a culture broth of growing cells. The cells are subsequently lysed and the lysate is washed over the microarray and radioactivity is measured. What kind of data are you collecting?

  1. Transcriptomic.
  2. Genomic.
  3. Metabolomic.
  4. Proteomic.
  5. Multiple of these.

  1. You perform a PCR reaction and sequence the results afterword. Unfortunately, the sequence exhibits several point mutations in comparison to the template DNA. What is the likely explanation for this?
  2. Your template didn’t melt fully during the denaturation phase.
  3. Your primers didn’t anneal properly resulting in nonspecific binding by the polymerase.
  4. Your polymerase has low fidelity (accuracy).
  5. You accidentally introduced a DNA contaminant to the PCR mix that was also cloned.
  6. Multiple of the above are equally likely.
  1. You are studying the heritability of dorsal fin height in salmon. You select tall-finned individuals from a population with mean fin height of 7 cm. The selected group has a mean fin height of 10 cm and after breeding, the offspring have a mean fin height of 8 cm. What can you tell given this information?
  2. Narrow-sense heritability is 0.3
  3. Broad-sense heritability is 0.3
  4. Narrow-sense heritability is 0.7
  5. Broad-sense heritability is 0.7
  6. Multiple of the above
  1. Probe DNAs are small DNA fragments that are either radioactively- or fluorescently-labeled. What can we do with probe DNA?
  2. Identify cells that have taken up a plasmid vector.
  3. Measure transcription levels.
  4. Determine the presence of a desired genomic DNA sequence.
  5. Test for specific homologies between species.
  6. Multiple of the above could be done with probe DNA.
  1. What is useful about dideoxynucleotides?
  2. They stop DNA polymerization.
  3. They release pyrophosphate.
  4. They can form atypical base-pairs.
  5. They can self-cyclize, promoting mRNA degradation.
  6. None of the above are helpful uses of dideoxynucleotides.
  1. You have two strains of orchid. One is an inbred line that has variance in height of 5.1 cm. The other is a wild-bred line that has variance in height of 7.3 cm. What is the most influential determiner of orchid height given this information?
  2. Additive genetic variance since the wild-bred line has higher variance than the inbred line.
  3. Genetic variance in general. We can’t isolate the increased wild-bred variance to just additive effects.
  4. Phenotypic variance since that is what is actually measured above.
  5. Environmental variance since the difference between the inbred and wild-bred variances are less than the total variance of the inbred.
  6. This can’t be determined given the above.
  1. Assume that snout length is an allelically additive trait in the platypus. If 4 genes with 2 alleles each govern snout length and each added allele produces an identical effect on snout length, how many phenotypes can be observed in a platypus population after controlling for environmental factors?

  1. 2
  2. 4
  3. 5
  4. 8
  5. 9

  1. In a line of lab mice, the trait for curled or normal ears is governed by a single trait with simple dominant/recessive interactions between the two alleles. However, 5 other gene products have an influence on the ear-curl gene, affecting the degree of ear-curling on a range from total epistatic shielding of the ear-curl allele down to no influence on ear curl. These affects are observed in a wide range of environmental conditions. Which of the following likely has the highest value when discussing ear-curl variance?

  1. VA
  2. VD
  3. VI
  4. VE
  5. This can’t be determined.

  1. When cloning a gene of interest using a plasmid vector, what step follows restriction digestion?
  2. PCR
  3. Ligation
  4. Transformation
  5. Transduction
  6. Transposition
  1. You perform a microarray test similar to what we discussed in class. Red-fluorescing NTPs were given to cancerous cells for growth while green-fluorescing NTPs were given to normal cells for growth. When the mRNAs from these cells are purified and washed over the microarray, what is indicated by a microarray point that appears blank?
  2. Both cells transcribed the gene at that point.
  3. Neither cell transcribed the gene at that point.
  4. The fluorescent tag got in the way of the base-pairing.
  5. It indicates the absence of the gene in both cell types.
  6. The microarray will never have a blank point on it.
  1. You are working with a breed of frogs that emit loud, prolonged calls during mating season. To see if the trait is heritable or not, you select a group of long-calling frogs from the general population and breed them. The original average call duration was 150 seconds. The mean call duration of the selected group was 200 seconds. If the mean offspring call duration is 190 seconds, what is the narrow-sense heritability and how heritable does this value make the trait?

  1. 0.75; highly heritable.
  2. 0.8; highly heritable.
  3. 0.75; poorly heritable.
  4. 0.95; highly heritable.
  5. None of the above.

  1. When attempting to overexpress a gene in E. coli, you add in a high-copy vector that leads to many more mRNA transcripts being produced, however; the change in phenotype doesn’t match the change in transcription levels. What explains this best?
  2. The cell recognizes that too much of that transcript is being produced and degrades the excess.
  3. Your measurement of transcript levels must be incorrect.
  4. You targeted the wrong gene.
  5. Transcription levels don’t perfectly correlate to expression levels.
  6. Your cells probably died.
  1. Which of the following is an assumption made about populations in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?
  2. The population is very large.
  3. Mating occurs randomly.
  4. There is no selection acting on the population.
  5. Only two of the above are true.
  6. All three are true.

These next two questions will be discussed more on Friday, but we’ll give a brief introduction to them now.

  1. An extended drought over the course of many years causes the nutty seeds released by an island’s trees to become harder and more difficult to crack. As a result, the island’s single bird species experiences selective pressure preferring stronger beaks that can crack the seed coat. Due to this, strong-beaked birds flourish on the island, though they are still able to breed with their weaker-beaked cohabitants. What has occurred here?
  2. Evolution
  3. Speciation
  4. Genetic drift
  5. Mutation
  6. None of the above
  1. A small band of birds colonize an island whose previous bird population was killed by a storm. While the original birds had a mix of brown and black coats, only brown-coated birds remained after a few generations. It appears that there wasn’t any selective pressure one way or the other, so what happened here?
  2. The founder effect
  3. Mutation
  4. Genetic drift
  5. Gene flow
  6. None of the above