Assignment 4: Role of telomerase in cellular aging

Definition/Comparison Questions: Instructions: In your own words, define the pairs of terms given below.

Write in complete sentences, stating the differences and relationships between the two terms, and give specific examples where appropriate. A

complete answer usually requires four to eight sentences.

1. centriole / kinetochor

2. cleavage furrow / cell plate

3. allele / locus

4. RNA primer / DNA polymerase

5. guanine / cytosine

6. translation / anticodon

7. operator / promoter

8. conjugation / transformation

9. RFLPs / Southern blot analysis

10. pleiotropy / polygenic inheritance

Short Answer/Short Essay Questions: Answer each of the questions given below in your own words.

Write in complete sentences where appropriate. A complete answer usually requires one to two sentences per mark, so a three-mark

question would be answered in three to six sentences.

(4 marks) 1. Explain how CDKs regulate cell division.

(4 marks) 2. Explain the role of transposable elements in eukaryotes.

(8 marks) 3. Using the following DNA template strand sequence, answer the questions that follow:

3’–TGCAGGAAGCTACATTAG–5’

a. What is the mRNA sequence?

b. What is the final sequence of amino acids in the peptide produced?

c. If the sequence is mutated so that adenine at position 11 is replaced with CYTOSINE (not uracil), how will the peptide be affected? What kind of a mutation is this?

(5 marks) 4. a. What is an operon?

b. How do inducible operons (e.g., the lactose operon) and repressible operons (e.g., the tryptophan operon) benefit a bacterial cell?

(5 marks) 5. Explain the possible role of telomerase in cellular aging and in cancer formation.

(6 marks) 6. a. Draw a diagram to show what could happen during meiosis that would result in an egg with two X chromosomes.

b. If this egg is fertilized and develops, what are the possible karyotypes of the offspring?

(6 marks) 7. A female yellow Labrador retriever homozygous for coat colour (bbee) is mated with a male black lab. They have two chocolate puppies, three black puppies and one yellow puppy. What is the genotype of the father? Use Punnett squares to show your reasoning.

(2 marks) 8. What is a proteome, and why is it studied in addition to (or instead of) the genome?

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.