Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Worksheet
Due to the amount of material covered in these worksheets, students are expected to complete all exercises prior to attending
tutorials. The goal of tutorial class time is to address material in the worksheet that the students find challenging. It is up to the TA’s
discretion to volunteer covering material that might be relevant but not directly asked by students.
1. Which amino acids’ codon(s), if altered, would most likely lead to premature termination of translation? Please explain your
answer.
2. One of the tRNA genes for tyrosine has a mutation in its anticodon sequence.
a. What might be the possible consequences of this change?
b. How would you determine which tRNA-Tyr anticodon was altered?
3. What would be the effect of truncating the 3’end of the 16S rRNA of a prokaryote?
6. Which of the following mutations would most likely have the severest consequences: Explain your reasoning.
a. A change in amino acid recognition of an aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase
b. A frame shift mutation at the end of the coding sequence of a gene
c. A mutation at a splice junction
7. List a few similarities between prokaryotic and eukaryotic translation (i.e. protein synthesis).
Exploring NCBI
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), located in the United States, houses a variety of databases and computing
tools as well as provides links to other external databases and computing tools relevant to cell and molecular biology. NCBI is a lead-
member of an international consortium whose goals are to create central ‘hubs’ from which a variety of biological information can be
publically accessed, in order to further our understanding of genes and their products in health and disease. NCBI is the central
repository for all known nucleotide and amino acid sequence data obtained from all types of biological organisms and is a key resource
for all molecular biologists. During the coming weeks we will explore this website and some of its capabilities.
2. What do the blue structures immediately below the green structures represent?
4. What is the difference between the different blue structures belonging to insulin?
10. What are the 1st 6 bases read in each of the blue structures? Hint: The zooming tool will allow you to explore the sequence and
retrieve this information.
11. The 1st amino acid incorporated in a protein is always the same. Why do none of those bases in the previous question code for
this amino acid?
12. Where can the bases that code for this amino acid be found. Can you navigate your way through the graphical panel to find
these bases? What is the location number of the 1st of the 3 bases relative to the chromosome? Hint: The zooming tool will
allow you to retrieve this information.
13. Are these bases encoded by the top or bottom line of grey letters? (The 2 grey lines of letters can be found at the top of the
Genomic regions, transcripts, and products section if you zoom in enough).
15. Towards the end of the gene, it is visible that some of the blue structures do not have corresponding red structures below them.
Why is this the case?
16. What are the beginning and end of the red structures called?