Chapter 5 Flashcards
What are some properties of prokaryotes?
- They cause infectious diseases
- can be studied as simple cells to understand fundamental principles
- represents the earlist form of life
- important mediators of ecological processes and geological cycles
- shows a variety of metabolic processes
Where are the major habitats of prokaryotes?
- Open ocean
- surface soils
- subsurface sediments beneath oceans and soils
What are some effects of prokaryotic cells dividing actively?
- gives promaryotes the opportunity to evolve quickly
- colonizes inhospitable habitats such as hot springs and salty lakes
What 2 groups are prokaryotes divided into?
- archaea
- bacteria
What are some differences between archaea and bacteria?
- bacteria don’t contain introns but some protein-coding genes in archaea do
- there are differences between tRNA sequences of bacteria and archaea
- enzymes involved in DNA replication differ between the two
- members of all cells contain phospholipids but bacteria and euloyotes build well membranes from phospholipids containing d-glycerol while archaea use l-glycerol
- the organic chains in bacteria and eukaryotes are fatty acids while archaea use polyisoprenes
- bacteria and eukaryotes link the organic side chains to glycerol useing ester linkage while archaea prefer an ether linkage
- bacterial cell walls contain peptidoglycon
- archaea and bacteria differ in their complements of metabolic pathways
What is the earliest evidence of life?
Microfossils called stromatolites that arose from Cyanobacteria (related to modern prokaryotes)
Why can’t wo assign Luca - the last common ancestor of all known life forms - to either archaeal or bacterial branch of the evolutionary tree?
There has been extensive gene transfer between archaea and bacteria (even though it is likely archaea are closest to LUCA)
What’s the form of a typical probargotic genome?
Single circular molecule of double-stranded DNA between 0.6 and 10 million bp long
What’s the structural form of E. coli?
- Single molecule of double stranded DNA closed into a circle
- DNA is supercoiled and associated with histone-like proteins called the nucleoid
- some E. colincells may contain plasmids (short double-stranded DNA molecules)
Although circular genomes are common in archaea and factories there are exceptions, what are they?
- many prokaryotic cells contain plasmids
- some prokaryotic cells have linear DNA (ex. Borrelia burgdorferi, organism that causes lyme disease)
- some prokaryotes content more than one chromosome (ex. Vibrio cholero, the organism that causes cholera)
Some prokaryote genomes contain insertion sequences which are what?
Mobile genetic elements, similar to eukaryotic transposons
Why are enzymes unique to prokaryotes studied?
Can be used to manufacture drugs against infection
In E. coli where does replication begin, end, and which direction does it proceed in?
- Starts at oriC
- ends at terC
- proceeds in both directions
How many sites of replication does bacteria have and how many does archaea have?
Bacteria has one while archaea generally have multiple
In prokaryotes, many mRNA transcripts contain several tandem genes which requires what?
Separate initiation of translation ( unlike viral polyproteins which are translated in one piece and then cleaved )
Bacteria ( sometimes archaea) co-transcribed genes have a related function forming what?
An operon
What are the 3 methods of transfer of DNA between prokaryotic cells?
- transformation: the uptake of ‘naked’ DNA
- conjugation: insertion of some or all of the DNA from one cell to another
- transduction: transfer of DNA from one all to another via a bacteriophage (virus)
What are the major groupings of archaea?
- crenarchaeota
- euryarchaeota
- korarchaeota
- nanoarchaeota
What was the first archaeal genome sequenced?
M. jannaschii
Why is greenhouse gas production so high in New Zealand?
The sheep and cattle host methonogenic orchaca in their stomachs
In which ways are archaea more closely related to eukaryotes than bacteria and vice versa?
- archaeal proteins involved in metabolism are more similar to those of bacteria
- archaeal proteins involved in transcription, translation, and regulation are more similar to those of eukaryotes
To survive at elevated temperatures, what must thermophiles and hyperthermophiles do?
Synthesize molecules that are stable to heat denaturation
For double stranded DNA and RNA what does thermal stability increase linearly with?
G + C content
Codon preference pattern tends to be preserved in closely-related species but diverges as what?
Species diverge
Highly expressed proteins show stronger bias in what?
Codon usage
How do thermophiles and hyperthermophiles strabilice their DNA structures?
Tight binding of special ligands