Consider the retinoblastoma gene, which is 7,500bp long. If RNA polymerase can transcribe at the rate of 50 nucleotides/sec, how many retinoblastoma transcripts are produced in 10 minutes?

Retinoblastoma is an extremely rare cancer of the retina in the eye. The disease mainly affects children up to the age of 5 years because it can only occur while the nerve precursor cells are still dividing. In its nonhereditary form, a tumor usually occurs in only one eye; in its hereditary form, multiple tumors develop in both eyes.To explore the basis for these differences, a cDNA clone of the Rb gene was used to probe the structure of the gene in cells from normal individuals and from individuals with nonhereditary or hereditary retinoblastoma. As shown in the figure Part A, normal individuals have four restriction fragments (A, B, C, and D) that hybridize to the Rb cDNA probe, indicating that each restriction fragment encodes at least one Rb exon. Samples from fibroblasts and tumor cells of affected persons show some differences in the patterns of hybridization, with some bands missing entirely and some bands present at half intensity. The order of the restriction fragments in the…

(a) How does the duplication of individual genes occur? (b) individual that inherit a genetic condition known as xeroderma pigmentosum exhibit an extreme sensitivity to sunlight exposure and often develop skin cancer by the age of 10. What repair pathway is most likely disrupted as a result of such mutation? Explain why?

In the treatment of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a possible mode of therapy is to inhibit the reverse transcriptase (RT) of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), whcih is required for the retrovirus to be propogated by RNA-directed DNA synthesis. In the figure below, one of the substrates for RT is thymidine; and two drugs, AZT and HBY097 are known to inhibit HIV RT> (a) Thymidine; (b) AZT; (c) HBY097   Look at the structures and predict the type of inhibition (i.e. competitive or non-competitive) likely to be shown by each drug. By using knowledge on enzyme, plan an experiment that would enable you to confirm the type of inhibition by investigating enzyme kinetics and explain how you would interpret the results.Remarks: Not more than 250 words.