Question
For the experiment outlined in Figure $15.8,$ could Nirenberg and Mattaei have substituted RNA polymerase instead of polynudeotide phosphorylase without otherwise modifying the experiment? Why or why not?
Step 1
RNA polymerase is an enzyme that synthesizes RNA by following a DNA template. It reads the DNA sequence and creates a complementary RNA strand. On the other hand, polynucleotide phosphorylase is an enzyme that can randomly link together any RNA nucleotides that Show more…
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For the experiment outlined in Figure $15.8,$ could Nirenberg and Matthaei have substituted RNA polymerase instead of polynucleotide phosphorylase without otherwise modifying the experiment? Why or why not?
Total RNA was isolated from human cells growing in culture. This RNA was mixed with nontemplate strands (single strands) of the human gene encoding the enzyme thymidine kinase, and the RNA-DNA mixture was incubated for 12 hours under renaturation conditions. Would you expect any RNA-DNA duplexes to be formed during the incubation? If so, why? If not, why not? The same experiment was then performed using the template strand of the thymidine kinase gene. Would you expect any RNA-DNA duplexes to be formed in this second experiment? If so, why? If not, why not?
Total RNA was isolated from nuclei of human cells growing in culture. This RNA was mixed with a purified, denatured DNA fragment that carried a large intron of a housekeeping gene (a gene expressed in essentially all cells), and the RNA-DNA mixture was incubated for 12 hours under renaturation conditions. Would you expect any RNA-DNA duplexes to be formed during the incubation? If so, why? If not, why not? The same experiment was then performed using total cytoplasmic RNA from these cells. Would you expect any RNA-DNA duplexes to be formed in this second experiment? If so, why? If not, why not?
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