GeneticsFinal Flashcards
How is gene expression regulated in prokaryotes?
Transcription initiation is one of the main mechanisms for regulating genes in prokaryotes.
What is an operon?
It is a transcript unit coding for multiple proteins under a single promoter. Many prokaryotic metabolic genes are involved in the same process and are organized into operons.
What is RNA polymerase?
It is enzyme that catalyzes the synthesis of RNA molecules from a DNA template during transcription. For transcription to become initiated: (a) RNA pol binding to promoter (b) initiation.
In prokaryotes, RNA polymerase easily binds to the promoter, default state of genes is “on”
Where does the sigma factor of subunit of RNA pol bind?
It binds to the -35/-10 promoter sequences to properly position the holoenzyme at the transcription start site.
What is the operator?
It is the binding site for repressors.
What are genetic sensors?
Allosteric regulation of transcriptional activators/repressors.
What affect does an ‘inducer’ have?
If it is there, its presence leads to increased gene expression, it will turn the gene on.
If there is no lactose present in the lac operon, what is the outcome?
Does not want to express genes, repressor binds to operator, prevents RNA pol to transcribe genes, no mRNA in this state.
If there is lactose present in the lac operon, what is the outcome?
Lactose acts as effector in the protein, binds repressor proteins, cause allosteric shift, now RNA pol is free and can move along the DNA, make mRNA copy, and now messenger RNA.
What is ‘partial diploid’?
It is a mutation that results in duplication of a segment of its DNA, resulting in two copies of some of its genes.
What are three main classes of lac mutants?
1) Structural gene mutations: affect function of just one enzyme - other is inducible.
2) Uninducible mutants: can’t make Lax Z and LazY in the presence of inducer (IPTG)
3) Constitutive mutant: make both LacZ and LacY, even in absense of Inducer.
What are partial diploids used for?
Allows to test for dominance/recessiveness and critical in determining ‘cis’ vs ‘trans’ acting factors.
What is the difference between cis and trans?
- Cis only effects the transcription of genes on the same DNA molecule
- Trans only effects transcription of genes on other DNA molecules
Are promoters and operators cis-acting or trans acting?
They are cis-acting.
Describe Lac operon regulation by P mutations
P- affects inducibility of both B-galactosidase and Permease - failure to “turn on”
Only effects transcription of genes physically attached to it on the same DNA molecule.
ie. chromosome or plasmid because the promoter is a cis-acting element.
Example:
P+Z+Y+/F’P-Z’Y- = Inducible
P-Z+Y+/F’P+Z-Y-= Uninducible
Describe Lac operon regulation by O mutations
- Oc = O- is constitutive, both B-galactosidase and Permease are constitutively active, failure to keep “off”
- similar to P, only effects transcription of genes physically attached on the same DNA molecule, operator is acting in cis-acting element
Example:
O+Z+Y+ Inducible
OcZ+Y+ Constitutive
O+Z-Y-/F-OcZ+Y+ Constitutive
O+Z+Y+F-OcZ-Y- Inducible
Describe lac operon regulation by I- mutations
- I- is similar to O, since both B-galactosidase and Permease and constitutively active BUT I does not have to be on the same DNA molecule, it can act in trans.
- I+, Z+, Y+ = inducible
- I-Z+Y+= constitutive
- I+Z-Y-/F-I-Z+Z- Inducible
Describe lac operon regulation: Is mutation
- it is a super repressor
- it is a different form of I-, it is dominant to I+
- acts in trans
- always cause it to be inducible
- Is mutations affect the allosteric site of LacI
How do glucose levels regulate cAMP levels?
- If there is high glucose, then ATP does not make cAMP.
- If there is low levels of glucose, then ATP does make cAMP.
How does cAMP-CAP complex activate transcription?
- CAP binds to cAMP molecules and creates CAP-cAMP complex.
- Then the complex binds to Promoter just upstream of RNApol. This increases transcription.
What are the conditions if bacteria wants to use glucose, but does not want to make lac operon genes?
- There is glucose present
- cAMP levels are low
- no lactose
- no lac mRNA
What happens to a bacteria that has glucose, wants to use it, but then you add lactose?
- The bacteria utilizes the glucose and it represses the lactose even though it is present.
- levels of cAMP are low.
- very very little lac mRNA.
What happens to the bacteria if there is no glucose, but only lactose?
- There is no glucose present
- cAMP levels are high
- lactose is present
- transcription is activated by CAP-cAMP
- there is a abundant amount of lac mRNA present
What is the difference between bacterial & eukaryotic transcription?
- still cis acting DNA sequences and trans acting proteins
- but there is a lot more of everything
Bacteria: activator protein on RNA pol = on, repressor protein= off
eukaryotic: RNA pol II = on
What form of chromatin do transcription factors and other molecular processes favour?
They favour euchromatin, the less packed and more spread it is, the better.
What are examples of cis-acting DNA sequences?
- core promoter
- promoter-proximal region
- enhancers/silencers
What are examples of trans-acting proteins?
- general transcription factors
- common transcription factors
- cell/tissue specific transcription factors
-transcription cofactors
What does efficient transcription of genes require?
Binding to enhancer sequences.
What is the difference between enhancers and silencers?
Enhancers promote transcription, and silencers prevent it.
What do transcription cofactors lack that transcription factors have?
They lack DNA binding domain
What is the PAX6 gene?
- it is a transcription factor
- involved in eye development in mammals
- different enhancers regulate PAX6 expression in specific tissues
- downstream of intron
- only applies to retina
Describe the Yeast GAL system
- molecule formula of glucose and galactose are identical
- difference between them is orientation of hydroxyl group @ 4th carbon
- glucose is the preferred monosaccharide sugar used in metabolism
- yeast can concert galactose to glucose-1-P for energy and carbon metabolism.
What are the four galactose-responsive enzymes required for the process?
GAL 1,-2,-7,-10
What are the three regulatory proteins required for the process?
GAL3, -4,-80
What is the function of GAL4?
- It is a key pathway, transcriptional activator that binds to UAS
- Binds to enhancers called “upstream activator sequences” located upstream of GAL enzymes
- each GAL gene has its own promoter - not organized into an operon.
- UAS sites are located at a distance from promoters, not immediately adjacent.
- Activation domain of Gal4 helps recruit chromatin modyfying proteins, Gal4 activation domain can function in many eukaryotic cells, insects, humans, etc.
Describe the mutational analysis of GAL4:
GAL4-: Gal enzymes uninducible
GAL80-: GAL enzymes constitutive
GAL3-: Gal enzymes uninducible
- Gal80 binds to Gal4 activation domain and blocks activation.
- binding of galactose and ATP changes structures of Gal3, causes Gal3 to bind to Gal80, remove from Gal4 (i.e. Gal3 acts as a sensor and inducer and makes it active again!)
Enhancer-bolcking insulators restrict the action of enhancers to specific genes. What is an example of one?
- CTCF
- leads to chromosomal DNA into sub-domains/loops (TADs) which are essential for proper regulator.
Chromatin often needs to be remodelled locally to allow gene expression. This is to make binding sites accessible which are not due to incorporation in nucleosomes. What is an example of a nucleosome remodelling complex?
- Swi/Snf uses energy from ATP to reposition or remove single nucleosomes, exposing binding sites.
- It is a coactivator, it does not bind to DNA itself, it gets recruited by enhancer-bound transcription factors.
In terms of “histone code”, define WRITERS, ERASERS, and READERs.
- Histone modifications are added by histone code WRITERS
- Histone modifications are added by histone code ERASERS
- Histone modifications are recognized and bound by histone code READERS
- readers are often coupled with writers or erasers. Different readers recognize different elements of histone code.
What is the effect of Histone acetylation on chromatin and therefore transcription? What would give the opposite effect? How would this work?
HAT (writers) would turn condensed chromatin (heterochromatin) to open chromatin (euchromatin), and HDAC (erasers) would do the opposite.
- Histone tail acetylation on lysines neutralize positive charges, loosens interactions with DNA (negative charge) and chromatin relaxes. Therefore there is increased accessibility and transcription. It creates binding sites for histone code readers that promoter activation.
What is the result of Histone tails being methylated? What enzyme is responsible for this?
- this will happen at lysine or arginine residues
- catalyzed by histone methyltransferase (HMTase) enzymes
- does not change the charge of the histone
- many histone methylation marks (H3K9Me) are associated with gene silencing, and act as a signal to recruit specific readers.
- promotes heterochromatin formation and tends to spread on chromatin.
What is the effect of HP-1 (Heterochromatin Protein 1)?
- It binds methylated histones, H3K9Me
- Promotes heterochromatin formation, recruits additional HMTase
- HMTase methylates neighbouring nucleosomes (chain reaction)
How would you stop the spread of heteorochromatin?
- Barrier insulators
- it is counteracted by HATS bound to barrier insulations which are DNA sequences
What are epigenetics?
The study of heritable traits that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence. Many modifications to DNA and chromatin structure are inherited.
Explain the epigenetic phenomenon in Drosophila eye:
- Brown + red pigments contribute to Drosophila eye colour
- “white” (w) gene codes an ATP-binding cassete (ABC) transporter that carries the precursors of red and brown pigments in developing eyes
- Saw WT and wild mutants.
What is Position-effect variegation? And what is an example? How did they discover this?
Position-effect variegation (PEV) is a phenomenon observed in genetics where the expression of a gene or genes is affected by their position in the genome
- Epigentic silencing by heterochromatin spreading is an example
- They mutagenized flies with X-rays, screened for offspring with unsual phenotypes and looking into neighbouring regions and which lead to the silencing.
How did they identify proteins that promoted or prevented the spread of heterochromatin? What were the results?
- They did screening, second-site mutations that effected spreading of heterochromatin and could see what made it better or worse.
Results: - HAT (histone acetyltransferase): spreading enhanced, more white+ silenced.
- Histone Methyltransferase and HP1: Spreading were supressed, fewer white+ were silenced.
What are the two principles of Mendel’s Law?
1) Each individual has two allele for each gene, passes only one to offspring at random.
2) Each allele has an equal chance of being inherited (independent assortment)
Describe Non-mendelian genetics
Pattern of inheritance in which traits (phenotypes) do not seggregate in accordance with Mendel’s Laws. The phenotype cannot be explained like this.
What is dosage compensation by X-chromosome inactivation?
- Dosage compensation is done so females and males have equal expression levels (around 1000 genes) located on the X chromosome. (around 80% get silenced by X inactivation)
- This explained the Non-mendelian inheritance of coat colours in toitoiseshell cats due to X-chromosome inactivation
- There was black and orange fur
- They saw that there were X-linked diseases that only applied to males and not females, for example males are colour blind, but if there was a skewed X inactivation for females, they could be colour blind as well.
- The inactive X in humans is silenced by repressive histone and DNA marks
- Dosage compensation by X-chromosome inactivation is a process that occurs in female mammals to equalize the expression of genes on the X chromosome between males and females. Since males have only one X chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes, if both X chromosomes were to remain active, females would produce twice as much of the proteins encoded by X-linked genes as males. To avoid this imbalance, one of the X chromosomes in each cell of a female mammal is randomly inactivated during embryonic development.
DNA methylation
- catalyzed by DNMT (DNA methyltransferase enzymes)
- occurs primary on cytosine in CpG dinucleotide
- 60-80% of CpG are methylated genome-wide in vertebrate.
- CpG methylation is not randomly distributed, mostly associated with intergenic regions, heterochromatin.
- associated with decreased levels of transcription.
- CpG island are clusters near promoters.
How can methylation associated with repression/silencing of gene expression be direct and indirect?
Direct effect: DNA methylation blocks transcription factor binding
Indirect: Due to recruitment of HDACs and HMTs that lead to repressive histone modifications.
- all can be passed through mitosis- heritable
- DNMTs have high affinity for hemimethylated sites. (guided by methylation pattern on parental strand)
What is the unusual pattern of inheritance of the Igf2 gene involved in embryonic growth?
- “Insulin-like growth factor 2”
- Binds to receptor on cell surface, stimulates cell to grow.
- Autosomal gene.
- Only if mutant allele inherited from father.
What is genomic imprinting? What is monoallelic inheritance?
- imprinting = silencing
- up to around 200 genes in humans and mouse, genomes only paternal or maternal, not both, expressed - as is there was only one copy of gene in the cell
- monoallelic inheritance
- sex-specific gene silencing
- non-expressed allele is said to be Imprinted
- imprinted copy is inactivated by mechanism involved in DNA methylation in maternal or paternal germ line
- maintained throughout life of progeny in somatic cells
In mice and humans, how are Igf2 and H19 genes imprinted?
- They are adjacent
- Igf2 is maternally imprinted, only inherited from father is expressed. maternal copy is silenced
- opposite is true for H19 gene, paternal is imprinted and mother is expressed.
What is an alternative way of methylation at imprinting control region determining gene expression?
- Sex-specific CpG methylation of imprinting control region, ICR - only seen in paternal gametes (sperm).
- Unmethylated ICR binds to to CTCF, acts as an enhancer-blocking insulator, so if it was methylated, it would prevent this, and H19 promoter would silence transcription.
How would dwafirsm happen?
- Faulty imprinting
- effected individual did not methylate/silence the paternal allele. So Igf2 is expression is repressed which is should not be. and then this is the result.
As a result of offsprings inheriting many things: proteins, mRNAs, and other RNAs, organelles etc. What are some things we could study?
Cytoplasmic inheritance, maternal inheritance, extra-nuclear inheritance.
What are 3 factors influencing the replication of mitochondrial genome?
1) Mitochondrial DNA is replicated within nucleoids
2) Nucleoids can divide within an organelle.
3) Mitochondria themselves divide.
Why is mitochondria inherited from the mother?
- maternal inheritance - cytoplasmic inheritance
- way more mitochondria in oocyte then sperm, upon fertilization, the few sperm in the mitochondria are destroyed (or consumed) by the oocyte.
What can be used as a tool to trace maternal heritage?
mtDNA
- can lead to heteroplasmy
- higher rate of mutation than nuclear genes, more frequent DNA replication, no DNA repair.
- spont. mtDNA mutations can lead to two distinct mt populations within a single cell - heteroplasmy.
What is an example of cytoplasmic inheritance (neurospora)?
Brown= not normally functional mitochondria
Green = normal
- if offspring is mutant poky, 100% affected/mutated is a result of mother
- maternally inherited
What does homoplasmic mean?
Random segregation of organelles at mitosis (or meiosis) can lead to cells that are homoplasmic, which means they are identical.
What are the traits of human diseases caused by dysfunction in mitochondria?
- effects at least 1/5000 people
- progressive
- multi-system disease (high-energy demand tissues)
- some autosomal, some inherited different ways, depends.
Describe the pedigree of human mitochondrial disease caused by mitochondrial genes? What is the solution?
- children of affected mother all have it
- children of affected farther do not have it
- in some cases if mother is heteroplasmic (mix of normal and non-normal) children may be normal.
- Solution: pronuclear transfer - three person in vitro fertilization: resulting embryo has 3 parents.
Describe the embryonic development in Drosophilia over 24 hours.
(a) sperm and egg nuclei fuse to create single-celled diploid zygote
(b) multiple nuclear divisions create a single multi-nucleated cells. (70 mins)
(c) nuclei migrate to outer embryo and divide several more times, creating syncitial blastoderm. (120 mins)
(d) cell membrane grows around each nucleus, producing layer of cells that surrounds the embryo. Resulting in cellular blastoderm. (180 mins)
(e) nuclei at one end of blastoderm develops into pole cells, which become germ cells.
Define “cellurization”
When individual nuclei are enclosed in plasma membrane to form cells.
ZGA
transcription at embryos own genes begin
After 2 hours, what is defined in embryo?
Head, tail and back/front regions.
After 10 hours, what happens in the embryo?
body plan gets subdivided into “segments”
Each segment goes on to form specific structures
Describe the two screens performed to identify genes required for organizing the Drosophila embryo.
Two screens: Maternal vs Zygotic genes
Screen 1: What mutations in the mother prevent her offspring from complementing embryonic development?
-cytoplasmic inheritance
- maternal-effect genes - phenotype determined by genotype of MOTHER.
Screen 2: which of the embryo’s own genes are needed for it to develop normally?
- zygotic genes - phenotype determined by genotype of the embryo
- inheritance shows “normal” mandelian pattern.
ex. mim homozygous - mutant phenotype.
Describe the cascade of transcription factor expression tat regulates early Drosophila development.
Based on similarities of mutant embryo phenotypes, able to organize genes into 5 groups that act one after another.
What is the function of the two maternal-effect genes? What are they?
Anterior (A): bicoid (mutants lack this structure)
-bcd, encodes TF
- protein forms A [high] to P [low] concentration gradient
- it is sufficient - inject bicoid mRNA direct formation of anterior structure
Posterior (P): nanos (mutants lack this structure)
- [A] low to P [high]
- not a transcription factor, but a transcription regulator
- Nanos inhibits transcription of uniformly-distributed maternal hunchback mRNA.
What are the function of Gap genes?
They translate maternal A-P gradients into broad subdomains.
- 9 gap genes identified
- (eg.) zygotic hunchback (hb-z),knuppel, knips, giant.
- all encode transcription factors.
- transcriptionally regulated by maternal-effect gene products.
- they are characterized by loss of several consecutive segments, corresponding to the to the region in the embryo where gap genes was transcribed - large gaps in their body plan.
- transcriptionally regulated by maternal effect gene products.
(there are 3 binding sites for Bcd in Hb promoter)
What are pair-rule genes?
-Further subdivision of the embryo
- pair-rule gene mutants are characterized by the absense of every other segment (even skipped - odd skipped)
- 8 identified
- all transcription factors
- expressed in 7 stripes, position of stripes depending on gene
- helps define 14 segments of embryo
- regulated by maternal effect and gap gene
- even skipped gene (eve), nuclei in stripe 2 will have specific concentrations maternally loaded and zygotic factors.
- High [Hb-z]
- Low [Bcd}
- Low [Gt],[Kr]
What are stripe-specific eve enhancers?
- eve: even skipped
- each enhancer has diff. arrangements of binding sites for maternally loaded factors and Gap genes.
- This allows enhancers to activate eve transcription in a specific stripe of nuclei.
“combinational control of transcription”
Describe the establishment of segmentation domains:
- Segment polarity genes
- encode components of two cell-cell signalling pathways, includes secreted proteins, membrane receptors, transcription factors…
- activated/repressed by pair-rule genes
- function t define A and P within each segment have mirroring of one half of each segment
What are homeotic mutations?
- mutant animals lack a particular structure, which is replaced by another structure, normally fond in other body segments (homeotic transformation)
- ex) (Ubx) - second thorax and set of wings in place of halteres
- Antp - leg instead of antenna
What are hox genes?
- found in the establishment of segment identify
- 8 genes, all encode homeodomain family transcription factors
- expressed in specific segments, some overlap
- activated/repressed by Gap and pair-rule gene products
- diff structures depending on Hox genes.
What is the physical basis of the mendelian law of heredity?
- chromosomes occur in matched pairs
- chromosome pairs segregate 1:1 in meiosis.
- chromosome pairs segregate independently.
- segregation patterns correlate w/ inheritance of traits.
What affect would 3n have?
Both banana and strawberry are 3n, no seeds, if there is not 3n then you have seeds.
Define euploid
good, two sets, nothing extra and nothing missing on a chromosome.