Submit reasoning and process, not merely answers! Problem Set 4: DNA Structure a
ID: 150085 • Letter: S
Question
Submit reasoning and process, not merely answers!
Problem Set 4: DNA Structure and Replication Submit reasoning and process, not merely answers! 1. You work at the Center for Disease Control and have been given to analyze a suspected bioterror agent that may be a type of Variola, a double-stranded DNA virus that is the causative agent of smallpox. Smallpox was one of humanities major scourges, killing as many as 500 million people in the 20h century. It is believed to have been wiped out in 1979 with arn aggressive vaccination campaign. Since few alive today are resistant to smallpox, a live virus could wreak havoc To analyze the virus, you obtain DNA from the precious sample of purified virus and (asa control) from canine parvovirus, a single-stranded DNA virus you happen to have on hand Unfortunately, you forget to label the two tubes! What else to do but to continue. so you analyze the two DNA samples for nucleotide composition (in the same way as Chargaff) giving the results shown below. Which tube contains which Variola DNA, and why? Recovery 93.2 94.1 Tube 1 15.7 33.4 32.7 11.4 Tube 2 18.7 34.4 26.9Explanation / Answer
Most probably it will be the tube 2. because the concentration of almost each nucleotide except T is higher than Tube 1 and recovery too is greater than Tube 1
As both the tubes contain the same virus so the probability of deviation is minimum. So a rule of thumb can be applied.
As a rule of thumb the standard sample will always contain maximum amount of each of the nucleotide because it is being purified under the standard protocol taking into account each factor which influences the separation process. The name standard has to met some specification strictly under some law. So the tube 2 will serve as control.
Because there are greater chances of contamination for the sample to be analysed, it will result in not much precise results and hence Tube 1 will serve as the sample.
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