Understanding Gene Regulation - High School Biology

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Question

A protein that binds to a DNA sequence and reduces transcription of a target gene is referred to as __________.

Answer

A repressor is a transcription factor that negatively regulates expression of a target gene. An activator is a transcription factor that enhances expression of a target gene. Activators and repressors often bind to the same genomic sequence to precisely regulate transcription.

An inhibitor is a factor that modulates a biological or chemical process, such as a cell signaling pathway or an enzymatic reaction, but does not generally bind directly to DNA. An insulator is a protein that forms boundaries between active and inactive genomic regions, but generally does not have a direct effect on a target gene.

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Question

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__________ are DNA segments that carry information that will ultimately not be transcribed into mRNA. These regions occur between __________, which are the DNA segments containing the genes to be transcribed and translated.

Answer

This is simply a matter of vocabulary. Introns do not contain coding sequences, while exons do. "Intron" comes from the word "intragenic," meaning between genes, and therefore between exons. During post-transcriptional modification, introns are spliced out of the initial RNA transcript.

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Question

Which of the following best describes the interaction between tRNA and mRNA during protein synthesis?

Answer

The ribosome is where translation happens, but it requires both mRNA and tRNA. mRNA provides the "recipe" for the order of the amino acids in its codons, each of which corresponds to a specific amino acid in the chain, and the tRNA molecules come in and bind appropriately when their anti-codons are complementary to the mRNA codons. tRNA molecules carry the amino acids to the ribosome, where the actual protein chain is then synthesized.

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Question

What is the functional unit in which numerous adjacent genes are under the control of the same promoter and regulated by the same operator?

Answer

The correct answer is operon. Found in prokaryotes and a few eukaryotes, operons allow transcription and translation of all the genes downstream of a promoter simultaneously. This is advantageous because these organisms are able to express a subset of related genes rapidly in response to external or internal stimuli.

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Question

What type of protein binds to the the regulatory region of genes in eukaryotic cells to regulate gene expression?

Answer

Transcription factors are proteins that bind to the regulator region of genes in eukaryotes and regulate whether a gene is expressed or not. A TATA-box binding protein is recruited after the transcription factors bind to the regulator region, and it eventually recruits RNA polymease. Tyrosine recombinases are not involved in initating eukaryotic gene expression.

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