Chapters 8 and 9 Flashcards
1
Q
- What are the 3 components of nucleotides?
- What are the 2 components of nucleosides?
- Which bases are Purines and which bases are Pyrimidines?
A
- Nitrogenous base + pentose + phosphate
- Nitrogenous base + pentose
- Purines: Adenine and Guanine, Pyrimidines: Cytosine, Thymine, and Uracil. Complementary bases pairing helps w/ stability, folding, and structure.
2
Q
- What separates DNA form RNA in terms of their base structure?
- Is the ring puckered or planar? What the most important positions in the rings?
- What does this puckered or planar structure help with?
A
- The two pentoses are closed ring forms (furanoses)
- 2’-deoxy-D-ribose is DNA
- D-ribose is RNA
- The ring is puckered. Significant in complex structures. The most important positions in the rings are the the 2’, 3’ and 5’ positions.
- Helps with flexibility and stacking.
3
Q
- What is different about minor bases?
- What nucleotides have additional rings?
A
- Most are methylated forms of the major bases.
- cAMP and cGMP
4
Q
- What type of bonds are nucleotides joined together by?
- What kind of linkages does the backbone have?
- What are oligonucleotides?
A
- Phosphodiester bonds 5’ phosphate + 3’ hydroxyl
- Creates a backbone
- pentose-phosphate-pentose-phosphate: Ester-linkages at the 3’ and 5’ positions.
- Up to 50 bases. 3’-5’ allows for the double turn of DNA.
5
Q
- What part of the molecule is hydrophilic? What group forms the h-bonds?
- What charge does phosphate have at 7.0 pH?
- At what maxima is UV light absorption for nucleotides?
A
- The backbone is hydrophilic, bases are hydrophobic. Pentose hydroxyls form hydrogen bonds with water.
- Negative, because phosphates are completely ionized at pH 7.0.
- 260 nm
6
Q
- Are bases hyrdophobic or hydrophilic?
- What is the reason for h-bonding between the bases of two different strands?
- Why do bases stack?
A
- Bases are hydrophobic, relatively insoluble in water.
- The reason for h-bonding and the bases being hydrophobic is to stabilize binding between two or more strands. (A:T 2 H-bonds) (G:C 3 H-bonds)
- Bases stack to minimize contact with water.
7
Q
- What method did Rosalind Franklin play in helping with the identification of the structure of DNA?
- What was the major observation?
- What were the other observations?
- What are some important features of DNA?
- Structure leads to function: what two grooves are present on the DNA helix?
A
- x-ray diffraction of DNA crystals.
- DNA is a helix with about two periodic sequences.
- Phosphate is on the outside of the helix and DNA has 1-3 strands.
- DNA is a double right-handed helix. Base-pairing is complementary. Backbones are on the outside (phosphate and sugar). Bases face inward. Strands are H-bonded together. Crick deduced that strands are anti-parallel.
- Major and Minor grooves
8
Q
- What kind of mutations does Ethidium bromide cause?
- How can we make this molecule safer?
- What molecule can we use instead and why doesn’t it cross the membrane?
A
- Frameshift mutations
- Ensure it cannot contact DNA, binds to the DNA and causes a frameshift.
- We could use gel red, it does not cross the membrane because it is big and insoluble.
9
Q
- What bonds does DNA rotate about?
- What does thermal fluctuations and the presence/absence of water produce?
- What does this DNA flexibility result in?
A
- Rotation about sugar-phosphate and glycosyl bonds.
- Bending, stretching and melting (broken H-bonds)
- Results in different DNA structures. Natural changes in bonds result in different structures.
10
Q
- What is A-form DNA favored in?
- What is B-form DNA favored in?
- Describe Z-form: Where is it found and what does it play a role in?
A
- Favored in anhydrous solutions. Favored by DNA-RNA hybrids and RNA alone.
- Most stable in biological systems for randome sequence DNA. Called “Watson and Crick” DNA.
- Certain base sequences and high salt favor this form. A left-handed helix, a more elongated than A or B, almost no minor grooves, flat major groove.
- Short stretches found in eukaryotes and prokaryotes.
- Plays a role in gene regulation.
11
Q
- What do four or more Adenosine residues lead to?
- What is a palindromic sequence?
- What are inverted repeats? What type of structure can they lead to?
- What are mirror repeats?
A
- A tight bend in the helix.
- The same sequence forward and backward.
- Occur over 2 strands of DNA.
- Self Complementary: Hairpins and cruciforms. Proteins recognize these loops and turn genes on.
- Occur often on the same strand.
12
Q
- What is Triplex DNA?
- What is Tetraplex DNA?
- What do they play a role in?
A
- B-form of DNA makes additional H-bonds in Major Groove.
- Special H-bonds: Hoogsteen Positions
- Non-Watson-Crick pairing: Hoogsteen Pairing
- 4-strand DNA where there is a high proportion of Guanosine residues, very stable
- DNA replication, recombination, and transcription.
13
Q
- What are the three RNAs?
- What is siRNA (iRNA or RNAi)? What does it do, and how can it be used?
A
- rRNA, mRNA (carries genetic information, DNA to ribosome), tRNA (translates information coded in mRNA into protein.
- Silencing RNA
- Long dsRNA “diced” into siRNA
- siRNA unwinds and becomes ssRNA.
- Binds to mRNA to inhibit translation via endogenous endoribonuclease activity.
- Can be used as a tool to manipulate gene expression.
14
Q
- What is always the product of transcription?
- What kind of helix does it form?
- After transcription, what can complementation produce?
- What form of helix does this product produce?
- What does the final structure of RNA form? What interactions play a role in stabilizing RNA?
A
- A single stranded RNA molecule.
- Right-handed helix.
- Double stranded RNA.
- Complementary strands tend to produce the A-form helix, B-form is not observed.
- Its final structure is complex with many forms. Weak interactions play a role in stabilizing the RNA.
15
Q
- What is DNA at room temperature in aqueous solution?
- What temperature does DNA melt at?
- What kinds of bonds are broken?
- What is disrupted?
- What happens when DNA is unwound and strands separate?
- Does each species have a unique DNA denaturation temperature?
- What would drive the denaturation temperature up?
A
- Viscous
- 80°C and pH extremes
- H-bonds are broken
- Base stacking is disrupted.
- Can be partial or complete, only change is in conformation. Function is not lost.
- Yes, each species has a characteristic denaturation temperature.
- The higher the GC content, the higher the denaturation temperature, due to H-bonding.