Deck 1: Introduction to Genetics

Question 1

In the 1600s, William Harvey studied reproduction and development. What is the term given to the theory which states that an organism develops from the fertilized egg by a succession of developmental events that lead to an adult?

A) sequential pattern formation
B) preformation
C) equational transformation
D) epigenesis
E) transduction

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Who was the Augustinian monk that conducted a decade of experiments on the garden pea, eventually showing that traits are passed from parents to offspring in predictable ways?

A) Alfred Wallace
B) Gregor Mendel
C) Aristotle
D) Francis Crick
E) Hippocrates

Answer 2

B

Question 3

What is a simple definition of an allele?

Answer 3

An allele is a variant form of a gene.

Question 4

Early in the twentieth century, Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri noted that the
behavior of chromosomes during meiosis is identical to the behavior of genes during gamete formation. They proposed that genes are carried on chromosomes, which led to the basis of the _.

Question 5

Name the substance that serves as the hereditary material in eukaryotes and prokaryotes.

Question 6

What is a mutation?

Question 7

In nonviral systems, what is the nature of the hereditary substance?

Question 8

Genetics is the study of _.

A) diploid and haploid
B) mutation and recession
C) replication and recombination
D) heredity and variation
E) transcription and translation

Question 9

Name two individuals who provided the conceptual basis for our present understanding that genes are on chromosomes.

Question 10

What does the term genetics mean?

Question 11

What is the term given to the theory which put forth the idea that living organisms could arise by incubating nonliving components?

A) preformation
B) spontaneous generation
C) evolution
D) collective combination
E) natural selection

Question 12

What term refers to the similarity between parents and offspring and what term refers to the lack of similarity between parents and offspring?

Question 13

Alternative forms of a gene are called _.

Question 14

Name the individual who, while working with the garden pea in the mid -1850s,
demonstrated quantitative patterns of heredity and developed a theory involving the behavior of hereditary factors.

Question 15

Who, along with Alfred Wallace, formulated the theory of natural selection?

A) Charles Darwin
B) Louis Pasteur
C) William Harvey
D) Gregor Mendel
E) James Watson

Question 16

In many species, there are two representatives of each chromosome. In such species, the characteristic number of chromosomes is called the ________ number. It is usually symbolized as _.

A) haploid; n
B) haploid; 2n
C) diploid; n
D) diploid; 2n
E) None of the answers listed is correct.

Question 17

What term is used to describe the fact that different genes in an organism often provide differences in observable features?

Question 18

Until the mid -1940s, many scientists considered proteins to be the likely candidates for the genetic material. Why?

Question 19

What is the term given to the theory which states that the fertilized egg contains a complete miniature adult?

A) transformation
B) transduction
C) cell theory
D) conjugation
E) preformation

Question 20

The various characteristics of organisms that result from their genetic makeup are collectively referred to as an organism's _.

Question 21

Recombinant DNA technology is dependent on a particular class of enzymes, known as ________ which cut DNA at specific nucleotide sequences.

Question 22

Arabidopsis is a model organism for the study of _.

Question 23

What is a transgenic organism?

Question 24

Organisms that are well understood from a scientific standpoint and are often used in basic biological research are often called _.

Question 25

What is meant by complementarity in terms of the structure of DNA?

Question 26

What is the composition of the genetic material?

Question 27

A number of genomes have been sequenced in recent years: Escherichia coli,
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, and Mus musculus. What are the common names for these organisms?

Question 28

A fundamental property of DNA's nitrogenous bases that is necessary for the double -stranded nature of its structure is _.

Question 29

The human genome sequence was reported in 2003 by two groups, the publicly funded
________ and _.

Question 30

Name the bases in DNA and their pairing specificities.

Question 31

What is meant by the term genetic code?

Question 32

Given that DNA is the genetic material in prokaryotes and eukaryotes, what other general structures (macromolecules) and substances made by the cell are associated with the expression of that genetic material?

Question 33

What term is applied to a variety of projects whereby genome sequences are deposited in databases for research purposes?

Question 34

Reference is often made to adapter molecules when describing protein synthesis in that
they allow amino acids to associate with nucleic acids. To what class of molecules does this term refer?

Question 35

List the two relatively complex processes in which genetic information is converted into functional products.

Question 36

What is another term for a biological catalyst?

Question 37

What represents an organism's genome?

Question 38

Research dealing with which human blood disorder was instrumental in linking the genotype to a specific phenotype, and what conclusion was reached?

Question 39

In 1996, a cloning experiment produced the sheep named Dolly. Contrary to the more traditional method of cloning by embryo splitting, Dolly was produced by which
procedure?

Question 40

Distinguish the functions of DNA and RNA in a eukaryote.

Question 41

Genetics is the study of heredity and variation.

Question 42

Bioinformatics is a discipline involved in the development of both hardware and software for processing, storing, and retrieving nucleotide and protein data.

Question 43

Complementarity in a genetic sense refers to the polymerization of nucleotides in DNA.