BNFO 300 
Molecular Biology Through Discovery
Questionnaire on: DNA Structure (part 2)
(please press SUBMIT button when finished)
Fall 2013 


I. Basic Information

A. Your name 
II. Old Business

(No need to respond to any section if you've done so in an earlier questionnaire and nothing's changed)

A. Research Proposal
The target date for finding a mentor is Friday, September 20, a few days away. After that you'll be doing things that call for input from your mentor (e.g. a bibliography). How far are you along in finding a mentor for your research proposal? Need any help? Feel free to send me for suggestions a proposed e-mail to a candidate faculty mentor.
     

B. Reading an article
Was the exercise on Tuesday reading the DNA experiment excerpt helpful? What would help you fight off the demons and gain something useful from a research article?
     

III. (Partially old business) DNA Structure

(No need to respond to any section if you've done so in an earlier questionnaire and nothing's changed)

A. How far have you gotten in DNA Structure?
     

Consider how comfortable you are with the following topics (in the notes DNA Structure):

B. The tetranucleotide hypothesis and why if true it would make it impossible for DNA to be the genetic material

C. The Chargaff rules and how they were found

D. How the double slit experiment works

E. How the helical structure of DNA and internucleotide distances can be discerned from Franklin and Gosling's x-ray photograph

F. The biological significance of Watson and Crick's model and how they arrived at it (model building -- have you tried it on your own with Build your own DNA?)
     

Choose up to three study questions related to DNA structure that you would most like discussed in class:

SQ1  SQ2  SQ3  SQ4  SQ5  SQ6  SQ7  SQ8  SQ9 
SQ10  SQ11  SQ12  SQ13 
Consider how comfortable you are with the following topics related to DNA directionality and palindromes:

G. The importance of thinking about DNA sequences in terms of 5'-to-3'

H. The nature of a DNA palindrome

I. The biological roles for palindromic sequences
     

Choose up to two study questions that you would most like discussed in class:

SQ14  SQ15  SQ16  SQ17  SQ18  SQ19  SQ20
IV. Benzer (1959) - What is a gene?

A. How far have you gotten in the companion to Benzer (1959)?
     

B. Have you tried out the analysis tool? If so, was it helpful? Did you find any obstacle in using it?
    Have you been able to transform go from Fig. 4 into Fig. 5?
     

Consider how comfortable you are with the following topics (in the notes DNA Structure):

C. Why determining the structure of genes was an topic that had to be addressed

D. How Benzer's discovery that an rII mutant of T4 could not plate on E.coli K12 opened the possibility of determining the internal structure of a gene

E. What is meant by the topology of a gene

F. What is meant by recombination and how it relates to distance between genetic markers

G. Why some mutants are able to recombine to produce viable progeny on K12 and others cannot

H. What is dictionary order and how it relates to a genetic map

I. What the recombination matrix, Fig. 4, represents

J. How the recombination matrix relates to the genetic map shown in Fig. 5

K. How this analysis relates to the topology of the rII gene
     

Choose up to six study questions that you would most like discussed in class:

SQ1  SQ2 SQ3 SQ4 SQ5 SQ6 SQ7  SQ8  SQ9 
SQ10 SQ11 SQ12 SQ13  SQ14 SQ15 SQ16 SQ17 
SQ18  SQ19 SQ20 SQ21 SQ22 SQ23 SQ24 SQ25 
SQ26 SQ27 SQ28 SQ29 SQ30 SQ31 SQ32  SQ33 
SQ34 SQ35 SQ36 
V. Miscellaneous

Any other comments, questions, suggestions, or concerns you may have?

Thanks!

REMEMBER TO CLICK SUBMIT!