Question

What are the four criteria of genetic material? List them and elaborate on their meanings, respectively. Give two examples of DNA being the genetic material for either prokaryotic or eukaryotic organisms using one of the four criteria and specify which criteria it is For the toolbar, press ALT+F10 (PC) or ALT+FN+F10 (Mac). Τ Τ Τ Arial 3 (12pt) T.SE iB

Answer 1

The genetic material encodes the information for life in its nitrogenous bases. For any biomolecule to act as genetic material, it must fulfill certain criteria. These are:

1) Stability: The genetic material should be stable and resistant to degradation by most changes that a life-form would face in a certain environment. Additionally, the information present should also be stable and should not undergo significant changes throughout the lifetime of the organism.

2) Replication: This is one of the most important properties that genetic material should be able to exhibit. The information that is stored in it must be reliably copied so as to ensure propagation in an efficient manner.

3) Mutation: The basis of evolution is variety. For a species to thrive and survive changes, it should be able to harness enough variation among its individuals and the source of this variation is mutation i.e. minor changes in the genetic material of the organism due to errors in copying mechanism. A genetic material should have this property. However, the errors in copying mechanisms should be extremely low to ensure that the information is passed reliably from the parents to the offsprings.

4) Genetic expression: The information stored will be of no use if it is only encoded. The information needs to be expressed in its functional form. This is achieved by the processes of transcription and translation that allow the information present in the genome to be converted to a functional protein.