Biology Riddles

Riv, an allele is a form of a gene... a triplet of base pairs is called a codon.

 

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river-wind, while on the right track, I don't think allele is the correct word there. Base, or nucleotide works better. An allele refers to the gene as a whole.

*edit: Dammit Blue, you beat me to it. Kudos.

 

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ah, crap you're right. it's amazing how fast the information flys out of your brain. Three years out of school, and I'm mixing alleles and codons.

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did I at least get the translation/transcription pair correct? translation is DNA->DNA during cell reproduction, transcription is DNA->RNA for protein creation? I was debeating which was which when I posted.

 

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Sort of...transcription is going DNA to RNA, but translation is RNA to protein. Replication is DNA to DNA.

*edit: I didn't notice this the first time, but each codon codes for an amino acid, not the whole protein. So when you change a base, the amino acid changes (and likely all subsequent ones), because there is a shift in the codons. You are correct, multiple codons can code for an amino acid.

 

Whups, ya got me there Idle.

Spurious:
I sez it's DNA gnomes that does it.

 

gah, I feel stupid.

 

Blue: What?

river-wind: No worries man. The only reason I have all this somewhat straight is because I am doing it now (albeit in a lot more detail), and my grade depends on it. The details aren't important, and you have the right idea.

 

Idle: I missed the amino acid/protein break.

Riv: I concur with Idle. Vocab was off, but idea is sound.

 

Re: Question/Riddle

Well, Mr. Monkey, I dunno. But, I think that Idle Mind and River and Blue are kinda on the right track. Here's my SWAG about how these substitutions come about; The keto-enol tautomerizations that occur in Guanine and Thymine occasionally cause T to be substituted for C and G for A. Also, the amino-imino tautomerizations that occur in Adenine that cause C to substitute for T, and the same amino-imino thing with Cytosine that will lead to A being substituted for G.

Anyhow, that's my wild guess. I understand that the repair systems usually correct almost all of this right away. But, what the hell it's my stab at this. Well, it's either this or the gnomes.

 

My gnomes theory gains supporters!

 

Hi BigBlueHead:
Well, the hypothesis that gnomes are involved does seem more plausible than the far-fetched mechanism that I proposed. I do have one problem with the gnome idea however:
Aren't gnomes placental mammals? Is is possible for them to be small enough for this?

 

I would have to appeal to Magic Powers to answer that question - in this manner:

"Gnomes can be small enough - if they use their Magic Powers."

 

I have a question - not a quiz - just something I don't know the answer to.

In some reading I've done lately I've come a the unit kDa(apologies if I've wrote it down wrong, it's not in front of me) in terms of a 30 kDa protein.

Does kDa mean 1000 amino acids? (I know this sounds dumb, but it could change the meaning of what I read)

Thanks in advance!

 

A kDa is a kiloDalton; it refers to a unit of atomic weight. If I remember correctly, a proton weighs one Dalton, hence a hydrogen atom weighs slightly more than one Dalton. I could be wrong... I'm not a chemist/physicist.

Check out http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictD.html

 

Thanks a lot, BigBlue !!

 

No prob, that was the easiest riddle yet! Heh.

 

Hi BigBlue: You're basically correct here about a hydrogen atom. But, here's the deal. If one considers naturally occurring Hydrogen, a Hydrogen atom has a mass of one dalton. Except, some Hydrogen atoms also contain a neutron. Those ones (Deuterium) have a mass of two daltons. If one looks at a periodic table, they see a mass for Hydrogen of 1.0079. This is because, if you have, say, a mole of H atoms, most of them have a mass of one dalton, and a few have a mass of two daltons. The 1.0079 is the average mass of the mix of the two isotopes. I'd go on about this a little more, but I'm busy right now researching gnomes.

 

Yeah, one Dalton is approximately equal to one atomic mass unit. Or it is equal...not sure.

 

Re: Question/Riddle

Answer:

There is no single answer as usual in biology. The answer totally depends on the organism. People have discussed here mostly the main causes of mutations in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells.

If we look now at the evolution of viruses we see that there evolutionary speed is much higher. In fact it is in the same range as the mistake rate produced by their polymerase. Their polymerase lacks proofreading capacity. Therefore, the main source of genomic mutations in viruses is their own polymerase.

For the other sources see the discussion above.

 

New Riddle

The Fruitfly, or Drosophila lives only for 14 days but can produce a giant egg in only 12 hours.

How can it do this?