Midterm 3 Flashcards
What solves the end problem?
Telomerase
What type of structure is telomerase?
ribonucleoprotein
Can errors in DNA be eliminated?
no, but it can be reduced
In human cells, how many times does DNA break spontaneously each day?
30,000,000
How many bp are in our cells
6 billion base pairs per cell
Chemical systems comply with what and are controlled by what?
thermodynamics and probability.
What is the engineers triangle?
How fast, cheap, good something is, and you can only pick two.
What is the cells place on the engineer traingle?
cells spend time and energy for accuracy
What are some sources of DNA error?
- base mis incorporation
- chemical mutagenesis
- ionizing radiation
- genetic mutagenesis
- spontaneous lesions
What are the kind of mutations?
- base substitutions
- insertions and deletions
- breaks in the backbone
When must mutations arise?
-Replication
When can descent occur?
-only with modificaton
What are the ideas under descent of modification?
- Variation: not every individual in a population is the same.
- Heritability: these differences can be transmitted between generations.
What is natural selection?
Differential survival: heritable differences increase or decrease the number of offspring that an organism has.
As genomes get larger, what happens to the tolerance of mutation?
Lower rates of mutation are tolerated
What are the three flavors of mutation reduction?
- Inherent accuracy (10^-3 - 10^-4)
- Proofreading . (10^-6-10^-7)
- Surveillance and repair . (10^-9-10^-10)
What does an imino tautomer of adenine base pair to?
cytosine instead of thymine
Which strand does DNA pol I proof read?
Nascent chain, 3’ end in the proofreading site, 3-5 exonuclease
What are the two exonuclease activities of DNA Pol I?
5 ́–3 ́ exonuclease chews through primers & other debris
3 ́–5 ́ exonuclease proofreads for accuracy
What are chemical mutagens?
DNA intercalating agents cause indels
What are three chemical mutagens?
- Proflavin
- ethidium
- acridine orange
What type of sequences are susceptible to slipped strand mispairing, which can cause indels?
Repetitive DNA sequences
What is Huntington’s Disease?
Incurable, progressive neurodegenerative disease, usually fatal.
How is Huntington’s Disease caused?
Expansion of triplet repeats. Usually normal people would have around 20 repeats, Huntington’s gives you 40, causing a protein structure to have too many of an amino acid. The mis-folded protein will aggregate and cause neuronal cell death.
What are the two types of mutations that can cause cancer?
Gain of function- in protooncogenes, promote cell division, is dominant
Loss of function- in antioncogenes, tumor repressor, is recessive.
Cancer is believed to need multiple mutational hits
With time, what happens to DNA repair machinery?
it becomes less efficient
How often doe sDNA damage occur?
- It is ongoing and cumulative
- Depurination (base loss): 20,000/cell/day -Deamination: 100/cell/day
- About 1/1000 of the genome in each human cell is damaged per year.
- If you live to age 80, that’s ~10% of the genome in each cell.
What can occur in DNA with radiation?
- UV crosslinking produces pyrimidine dimers
- Leading cause in skin cancer, most common cancer
How are pyrimidine dimers in DNA repaired?
- Nucleotide excision repair
- DNA photolyase (not in humans)
What is DNA photolyase?
a remarkable solar-powered enzyme that repairs cyclobutane thymine dimers
How does DNA photolyase fix dimers?
-MTHF photon antenna absorbs UV-A and gets as photo excited–MTHF transfers to photo excitation to FADH– FADH transfers to dimer to break into monomers
What does MTHF stand for?
MTHF = methenyltetrahydrofolate
How are UV photoproducts recognized in NER?
System recognizes
helix (backbone) distortions, not specific chemical groups or adducts.
What proteins are involved in NER?
-UvrABC endonuclease (ABC excinuclease), UvrD, Pol I, ligase . (total of 16 proteins involved in humans)
What is Xeroderma Pigmentosum?
- genetic diseases of excision repair.
- In humans NER utilizes 16 different proteins. Mutations in many of these cause XP.
- characterized by sun sensitivity (sever sun burns) . 25 % of affected have neurological manifestations
What are the steps to mismatch repair?
- MutS recognizes DNA damage and dimerizes
- MutL is recruited
- ATP is used, the complex acts like a motor and moves in opposite directions creating a spool
- Mut H is recruited, using UvrD and exonuclease to remove strand with error
How can DNA mismatch repair tell which DNA strand is the parent strand?
-Hemi methylation of the parent strand
What are some alkylating agents?
- Nitrogen mustard
- ethylnitrosourea
- MNNG
What are some alkylation products?
- O6-methylguanine (pairs with C or T)
- O6alkylgunaine
How are common alkylation products repaired?
-MGMT:
Removes alkylmoiety by transferring onto its cys residue, not an enzyme can only be used once
What DNA modifications are produced through normal metabolism?
-oxidizers, over 100 DNA oxidative modifications
What are some powerful oxidizers?
- cytosine to Uracil
- adenine to hypoxanthine (binds to cytosine)
What is the process of base excision repair?
- The defective or incorrect base is removed by DNA glycosylase. (several DNA glycosylases recognize different bases.
- Backbone cleaved at AP site by endonuclease.
- DNA polymerase removes the naked sugar/phosphate and fills in the gap which is then sealed by DNA ligase
What is an AP site?
abasic (apurinic or apyrimidinic),
OH is left when DNA glycosylase acts on base
Why does DNA have Thymine?
-Do not have uracil in DNA because cytosine deanimates into Uracil, uses base excision to remove it. So thymine is used for an indicator of Uracil damage.
What catalyzes base excision?
-Uracil-DNA glycosylase
What is the mechanism of Uracil-DNA glycosylase?
-hydrolysis, base flipping, distorts DNA backbone
Why is RNA an intermediate?
Regulation, and maybe the history.
- RNA is catalytic, it could function as genome and replicase.
- RNA is used for amplification, ribosomes as factories, and mRNA as messages to factories
What came first, RNA or DNA?
RNA
What is the DNA coding strand?
-sense strand
What is the DNA template strand?
-antisense strand, base pairs with nascent RNA
What is RNAP?
RNA polymerase, can initiate without primers
What is used in the active site of RNAP?
- 2 Mg2+
- catalytic site is conserved
How do transcription machinery know where to initiate?
-promoters, Cis-acting DNA
How many DNA-dependent RNA polymerases does Eukaryotes have?
- 3-Pol I, II, III
- discovered at UW from sea urchins from the sound
How is the Pre-initiation complex formed?
-From RNAP II and General transcription factors
What is the TATA-binding site (TBP)?
- key subunit of TFIID
- TBP introduces a 45 degree bend to the double helix, locally untwisting DNA
- Universal GTF, required for RNAP I, II, III
What are enhancer sequences?
- regulate activity of core promoters in Eukaryotes
- a few hundred bases upstream from start site.
- each gene has different array of enhancer sites
- specific sequences bind different transcription factors, modular control
Core promoters are regulated by?
Enhancer sequences
How do enhancer sequences regulate core promoters?
- activator protein binds to enhancer sequences
- activator proteins interact with mediator proteins (large complex) in order to regulate transcription
Mediators are required for all —- promoters.
RNA II promotors.
What is heterochromatin and euchromatin?
regions of repressed (condensed) and activated (dispersed) transcription.
How many different proteins make up histones?
4 different proteins form and octamer.
How is transcription initiation regulated by DNA accessibility?
- chromatin structure is changed
- motors use ATP hydrolysis to move nucleosomes around to expose sites
- resemble helicases, but lack the ability to unwind DNA.
How is the structure and activity of chromatin controlled?
- post translational modifications
- Writers add marks to chromatin
- erasers removes marks
- marks can be placed on DNA or histones
How are biological readouts produced from the marks placed on chromatin?
- reader proteins specifically bind to the histone modification
- chromatin condensation or de-condensation
- transcription activator binding
What are some enzymes that write and erase chromatin marks?
writes: -DNA methytransferases (DNMTs) -histone acetyltransferases (HATs) -histone methyltransferases (HMTs) Erases: -histone deacetylases (HDACs) -lysine demethylases (LSDs)
All these occur on tail of histones, bunch of different reactions
Also histone kinsases and ubiquitin ligases
What is a covalent modification of DNA?
Methylation:
- DNA methytransferses use DNA (CpG) and SAM
- the methyl on the DNA does not affect base pairing, but prevents transcription factors from binding, shutting of transcription
- in mammals -60-90 percent will be methylated
What are some modifications of histones?
- phosphrylation (Ser, Thr)
- acetylation (Lys)
- methylation (Arg, Lys)
- ubiquitination
What happens when histones are phosphorylated versus acetylation?
-Phosphorylation adds a negative charge, acetylation neutralizes it with a positive charge, making DNA not as bound tightly and easier to open up.
What are major target sites for regulatory modifications of histones?
N-terminal tails:
- H3
- H4
- H2A
- H2B
In the methylation of histone, what substrate is the methyl donor?
-SAM
What can be found in active genes?
-heavy acetylation
What are primed genes?
-inactive genes in an activatable state. have less-heavily acetylated histones.