Nucleic Acids Electrophoresis Quiz

Genetic Engineering

• The process of introducing foreign DNA into a bacterial cell is called transformation.

DNA Manipulation

• Ligase is the enzyme used to catalyze the process of joining two pieces of DNA from different sources together.
• Restriction enzymes are proteins that cleave DNA molecules at specific sites.
• The main function of restriction enzymes in bacterial cells is to protect against viral infections.

Plasmid DNA

• The supercoiled conformation of plasmid DNA migrates fastest in a gel during electrophoresis.
• The first step in rapidly isolating plasmid is alkaline lysis.
• Cutting plasmid vector with AvaI is called restriction.

Electrophoresis

• The purpose of using molecular weight markers during electrophoresis is to determine the size of the DNA fragments.
• Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) has high resolving power and separates DNA only over a narrow size range.
• Agarose gel electrophoresis has less resolving power and separates DNA molecules of up to tens, and even hundreds, of kilobases.
• In polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, small molecules such as oligonucleotides can be resolved from one another with the applied electric field.

Cloning

• The primary purpose of cloning a piece of DNA using endonucleases is to amplify the DNA fragment.
• DNA ligation requires ATP and a cofactor such as NAD+ or ATP.
• Expression of a cloned gene can be accomplished by inducing the transcription and translation of the gene in a host cell.

Plasmid Vectors

• Plasmids can carry antibiotic resistance genes naturally.
• Plasmids can be engineered to be useful for protein expression, gene therapy, and vaccine development.
• The cloning marker for plasmid vectors that contain the lacZ gene is β-galactosidase.