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

HaeII is a 4 cutter enzyme that means it would find restriction site by the chance about every 44 = 256 nucleotides on the average.

So, the average size of the fragment is 256 base pairs.

Calculate the total number of fragments generated by this enzyme:

= 2.13*106/256

= 8320.3

= 8.3*103

This enzyme can form 8.3*103fragments.

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