A scientific study demonstrated that rat mothering behavior impacts the stress response in their pups. Rats that were born and grew up with attentive mothers showed low activation of stress-response genes later in life, while rats with inattentive mothers had high activation of stress-response genes in the same situation. An additional study that swapped the pups at birth (i.e., rats born to inattentive mothers grew up with attentive mothers and vice versa) showed the same positive effect of attentive mothering. How do genetics and/or epigenetics explain the results of this study?

Explain how single nucleotide changes can have vastly different effects on protein function.

A scientist splices a eukaryotic promoter in front of a bacterial gene and inserts the gene in a bacterial chromosome. Would you expect the bacteria to transcribe the gene?

Many antibiotics inhibit bacterial protein synthesis. For example, tetracycline blocks the A site on the bacterial ribosome, and chloramphenicol blocks peptidyl transfer. What specific effect would you expect each of these antibiotics to have on protein synthesis?Many antibiotics inhibit bacterial protein synthesis. For example, tetracycline blocks the A site on the bacterial ribosome, and chloramphenicol blocks peptidyl transfer. What specific effect would you expect each of these antibiotics to have on protein synthesis?Tetracycline would directly affect:tRNA binding to the ribosomeribosome assemblygrowth of the protein chainChloramphenicol would directly affecttRNA binding to the ribosomeribosome assemblygrowth of the protein chainTetracycline would directly affect:tRNA binding to the ribosomeribosome assemblygrowth of the protein chainChloramphenicol would directly affecttRNA binding to the ribosomeribosome assemblygrowth of the protein chain

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients often harbor nonsense mutations in their spliceosome machinery. Describe how this mutation of the spliceosome would change the final location and sequence of a pre-mRNA.

If mRNA is complementary to the DNA template strand and the DNA template strand is complementary to the DNA nontemplate strand, then why are base sequences of mRNA and the DNA nontemplate strand not identical? Could they ever be?

DNA replication is bidirectional and discontinuous; explain your understanding of those concepts.

 In eukaryotic cells, DNA and RNA synthesis occur in a separate compartment from protein synthesis. In prokaryotic cells, both processes occur together. What advantages might there be to separating the processes? What advantages might there be to having them occur together?

Explain Griffith’s transformation experiments. What did he conclude from them?

Imagine the Meselson and Stahl experiments had supported conservative replication instead of semi-conservative replication. What results would you predict to observe after two rounds of replication? Be specific regarding percent distributions of DNA incorporating 15N and 14N in the gradient.