The bacterium Thermus thermophilus was first isolated from hot springs in Japan,

Question

The bacterium Thermus thermophilus was first isolated from hot springs in Japan, living in an environment with an average temperature of 68 celsius (154F). This temperature would kill you, but these organisms are adapted to it. One of the adaptations to this lifestyle includes DNA that is 70% G-C base pairs, one of the more extreme departures from the average 50%. This chromosome is about 2.13*10^(6) bp in length, quite normal for a bacterial species.

The restriction enzyme, Haell, recognizes the degenerate sequence , 5'-RGCGC^(V)Y-3', in which R can be any purine and Y can be any pyrimidine and the ^(v) represents the site of strand cleavage. If you were to digest T. thermophiles DNA with Haell, what would be the average size of the fragments, and how many fragments would you expect to get?

Explanation / Answer

There are 4 nitrogen bases (A, T, G, C) which can occur in the sequence of DNA. Hence the probability of occurrence any of one of the specific base would be

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