Final Exam Study Guide s8

Final Exam Study Guide

Protein Synthesis

 What is gene expression?

 What happens during Transcription and translation and where in the cell do these processes occur?

 One-gene one polypeptide hypothesis

 Characteristics of the genetic code

 Promoter and termination sequences

 Start and stop cocdons

 Triplet, codon, anticodon

 Post transcriptional modifications of mRNA

 Role of mRNA and tRNA

 Initiation, elongation and termination of transcription and translation

 Silent, missense and nonsense mutations

 What happens if the reading frame is altered?

 What is a mutation and how can they be caused?

Control of Gene Expression

 What gene regulation and how does it relate to differentiated cells. Gene expression.

 The lac operon

o What is an operon and what types of organisms posses them?

o What is the organization of the lac operon

o What are the components of the lac operon?

o What is the role of the regulatory gene, repressor protein, and RNA polymerase in the lac operon?

 What are all of the levels of DNA packing?

 What are histones and nucleosomes and how are the two related?

 What is epigenetic inheritance?

 What is X chromosome inactivation? Barr body?

 How are eukaryotic genes organized?

 What are transcription factors and enhancers and what role do they play in transcription? Final Exam Study Guide

 What are microRNAs? What role do microRNA’s have in RNA interference? What is RNA interference? What is the purpose?

 Be aware of all the ways in which gene expression is controlled (gene regulation)

 Know what cloning is and the terms related to the cloning techniques discussed in class.

o Nuclear transplantation

o Reproductive cloning

o Therapeutic cloning

o Embryonic stem cells

o Adult stem cells

o Blastocyst

 What is the genetic basis of cancer?

 What are proto-oncogenes and what types of proteins do they code for? What is an oncogene?

 How can mutation, duplication and movement of a proto-oncogene so that it is under the control of a different promoter lead to cancer?

 What is the tumor suppressor gene?

 What is a mutagen? Carcinogen?

 Which substance produces more types and cases of cancer?

Concepts of Evolution/Population Genetics

 Who is Darwin and what important paper did he publish?

 What were two observations that Darwin made about the plant and animal specimens he observed/collected?

 What is descent with modification by natural selection?

 Why was the fossil record and biogeography important in Darwin’s considerations?

 What is homology?

 What are homologous structures?

 What is a population? Gene pool? Final Exam Study Guide

 What is microevolution?

 What is the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium model and why is it useful?

 What five conditions must be met in order for a population to remain in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?

 Know how to calculate genotype and allele frequencies.

 Be able to explain how the five forces of evolution can lead to microevolution?

 What is gene flow, genetic drift and bottleneck effect?

 What is relative fitness and how does it relate to natural selection?

 What is disruptive, stabilizing and directional selection?

 What is speciation?

 What are prezygotic and postzygotic barriers to sexual reproduction?