Question

1. Terry is a scientist who wants to examine the properties of a newly discovered substance. The substance appears to be organic based therefore, Terry feels as if the substance can be easily broken down by macromolecules. Terry decided to incubate the substance with a cell extract that contain several different types of macromolecules. After a one-hour incubation the substance has been broken down in the same way molecules are broken down by proteases. However, upon further inspection of the cell extract, there are no amino acids found in the extract. Given this information, what most likely broke down the substance? Explain your reasoning.

2. Jessica and Mandy are having a debate. Jessica says that splicing can only occur if the 2’OH group is present on Adenine within the intron region. Mandy says no, it all depends on the splicing machinery, if the spliceosome is present splicing can occur. Who is right? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

Proteases are enzymes which degrade proteins by hydrolysing the peptide bond resulting in formation of smaller sized peptide chains and finally amino acids.
Carbohydrates bare also degraded into smaller chain by the process of hydrolysis. This reaction is catalysed by enzymes like amylase.
As the enzyme has mechanism similar to protease, the most probable macromolecule candidate would be Carbohydrate.
Spliceosomes are complex proteins which catalyse the splicing in RNA. Spliceosome components recognises specific sequence at introns called splice sites. In the process of splicing nuclear pre-mRNA introns are removed by two consecutive transesterification reactions. This requires presence of an OH group.
Thus both Jessica and Mandy have are correct in what they are arguing except both have used half of the information about mechanism of splicing.