Suppose that you would like to make a human protein in bacteria. You clone a fra

Question

Suppose that you would like to make a human protein in bacteria. You clone a fragment of genomic DNA that contains the human gene into a plasmid, transform the plasmid into the bacteria, and isolate colonies containing the recombinant plasmid.

Which of the following results would you expect from this experiment?

Select all that apply.

Select all that apply.

The bacteria could produce a normal, functioning human protein. The bacteria could produce no human protein. The bacteria could produce a much longer protein with an incorrect amino acid sequence. The bacteria could produce a truncated, nonfunctional human protein.

Explanation / Answer

Bacteria are prokaryotes and humans are eukaryotes. There exists much difference between prokaryote and eukaryote genes. ONe such difference is the presence of introns in eukaryote genes. Introns are sequences that are not included in the mature mRNA that is translated into a protein. Eukaryote cells have machinery to splice/remove the introns; whereas prokaryotes lack the same. Moreover, the promotors of eukaryotes may not efficiently recognized by enzymes of prokaryotes.

Therefore, the bacteria could produce no human protein.

The bacteria could produce a human protein only when the introns are removed. To achieve this, cDNA is to be prepared from mRNA and is to be cloned into a plasmid. Genomic DNA isolated directly from cellular genome of eukaryotes cannot be transcribed/translated in bacteria, unless the bacteria is modified to have splicing machinary in it.

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