Question

Know who James Watson, Francis Crick and Rosolind Franklin were and what discoveries they contributed to.

Know the monomer used for the construction of nucleic acids.

Know about purines and pyrimidines

Know about Chargaff’s rule

Understand how complementary base pairing works

Know the processes of Transcription, Translation and Replication

Know about prokaryotes operons

Know how eukaryotic cells regulated protein production

Know what a mutation is and the types of point mutations described

Know the three outcomes of mutation

Know the parts of the cell cycle

Know the purpose of mitosis and all of its phases

Terms to know:

Gene

Genome

Promoter

Operator

Mutation

Apotosis

Semi-conservative replication

Leading strand

Lagging strand

Chromosome

Chromatin

Sister chromatids

Cancer

Tumor

Answer 1

• James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin were scientists who contributed to the discovery of DNA double helix structure.
• nucleotide tri-phosphates (NTPs) are the monomers for nucleic acid. They are generally five types : ATP (adenosine triphosphate), GTP (guanosine triphosphate), CTP(cytidine triphosphate), TTP ( thymidine triphosphate) and UTP (uridine triphosphate).
• Purines and Pyrimidines are nitrogenous bases of nucleotides in DNA and RNA. Purines have two carbon-nitrogen rings (adenine(A) and guanine(G)) whereas Pyrimidines have one carbon-nitrogen ring ( cytosine(C), thymine(T), and uracil(U)).
• Chargaff's rules state that the DNA strand of any organism should have a 1:1 ratio of purine and pyrimidine bases. It further states that %A=%T and %G=%C.
• Complementary base pairing is significant as the double helix of nucleic acid is anti-parallel in nature and pairing takes place between purines and pyrimidines i.e A binds with U/T whereas C binds with G.
• The central dogma has the processes of Replication, Transcription, and Translation. Replication is the process by which parent DNA multiplies and replicates to form new DNA. Transcription is the process by which RNA is produced by using DNA as template. Translation is the process by which RNA is utilized to produce proteins using ribosomes.
• Prokaryotic operons are DNA regions that have a group of related genes governed by one promoter region and one operator region. E.g. lac operon consists of lacZ, lacY, and lacA genes.