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Bio311 Homework Assignment #10

Lodish Chapter 11: RNA processing nuclear transport, and post-transcriptional control

This homework assignment is for study purposes only and is not to be turned in. It will not be included in calculation of your final grade.

1. Imagine that you are studying a newly identified G protein involved in a cellular response to adrenaline. You observe that if you isolate your protein from cells that are growing in the presence of high levels of adrenaline, your protein is complexed almost exclusively with GDP. When you isolate it from cells that are not exposed to adrenaline, it is almost exclusively complexed with GTP. Propose two different hypotheses about the regulation of your protein in response to adrenaline that would explain your observations. (Hint--refer to our discussions of the activity and regulation of Ran for ideas...)

2. If male (XY) Drosophila embryos carried a DNA construct encoding an inducible sex-lethal gene lacking the 3rd exon, and expression of this gene were induced early in development, what would you predict would be the phenotypic effect? What if the DNA construct encoded an inducible transformer gene lacking its second exon?

3. Imagine that an in vitro transcription reaction could be used to synthesize RNA using UTP, CTP, GTP, and dATP (rather than ATP). If you exposed this in vitro-transcribed RNA to all of the components necessary for splicing, would splicing occur? Why or why not?

4. Predict the effects of mutating the DNA encoding a eukaryotic gene's poly-A signal so that it does not conform to the consensus recognition site for CPSF.

5. Describe two different types of mutation to the DNA encoding a bacterial rho-independent terminator that would be likely to prevent transcriptional termination at that site.

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Created by: bkbaxter@lclark.edu
Updated: 11 Nov 00