Week 1

Question 1

What are the three main levels of organisation in biodiversity?

Answer 1

• Ecosystems, species - populations
• Genes (What we’ll be doing in molecular genetics and evolution. You need diversity here to have it higher up levels)

Question 2

Where are the two parts of an animal cell with DNA?

Answer 2

• nucleus (nuclear genome)
• mitochondrion (mitochondrial genome) - circular

Question 3

How many chromosomes do we have?

Answer 3

• 46 chromosomes - 23 pairs

Question 4

What are chromosomes made of?

Answer 4

• chromosome - chromatin - histone, dna double helix.

Question 5

What are nucleotides made of?

Answer 5

• phosphate + sugar (deoxyribose) + nitrogenous base

Question 6

What makes the backbone of DNA?

Answer 6

• sugar phosphate backbone (bases are in the middle)

Question 7

What bonds are bases connected by?

Answer 7

• hydrogen bonds

Question 8

What is a nucleic acid?

Answer 8

• a chain of nucleic acids

Question 9

What’s the difference between A, T, C, G in terms of bonds?

Answer 9

• purines bond to pyrimidines
• T double A
• C triple G so is stronger
• CT are pyrimidines

Question 10

How much DNA in a chromosome?

Answer 10

• 2 million base pairs in one chromosome

Question 11

What is the genome?

Answer 11

• entire set of coding and non-coding genetic material.

Question 12

Whats the point of non-coding DNA?

Answer 12

• it doesn’t contain information to make proteins
  -however, parts are transcribed into functional non-coding RNA, and some play a role in transcription and translation regulation (promoters, regulatory sites)

Question 13

What is the molecular unit of heredity?

Answer 13

• genes

Question 14

What are loci made of?

Answer 14

• a string of nucleotides on a single chromosome.

Question 15

Do you have non-coding DNA in genes? What are they?

Answer 15

yes, introns do not code for anything. Exons do. Ex for expressed

Question 16

What do introns do?

Answer 16

• They are spliced out during transcription
• increase transcript levels by affecting the rate of transcription, nuclear export, and transcript stability

Question 17

Transcription vs translation?

Answer 17

• RNA is transcribed from DNA to mRNA in the nucleus, then this is translated into a protein in the cytoplasm.

Question 18

What is alternative splicing doing?

Answer 18

• exons being spliced out or not making a different protein after translation.

Question 19

What would you write down in a lab?

Answer 19

• dates, sample names, locations
• chemicals, reagents/recipes
• protocols/modifications to standard protocols
• potential sources of error
• results

Question 20

What does CO1 do?

Answer 20

• used for animal species identification, and we’re going to do a PCR on that to replicate it, sequence it, then use online databases to try find a species ID.

Question 21

What is the mitochondrial control region?

Answer 21

• has a lot variation due to mutation so has a lot of historical information of migration etc.
• this only maternal (readable history and unbroken back through female ancestors)

Question 22

What is the d-loop?

Answer 22

• the mitochondrial control region aka d loop, is often used to track maternal ancestry? It doesn’t really tell us any information - non-informative.