RNA needs a break
Name that organelle
Evolution did WHAT?!
We teach our kids this
Labapalooza
100
I carry a copy of protein-coding information from DNA to the ribosome
What is RNA?
100
I contain my own DNA, make ATP, have two membranes, and probably started life as a bacterium that made a terrible career decision
What is the Mitochondrion
100
Sharks have them. Dolphins have them. Their common ancestor did not. Similar environments independently produced similar streamlined bodies
What is convergent evolution?
100
Plants consume carbon dioxide and water to make glucose and release oxygen using this process
What is photosynthesis?
100
Robert ____ helped popularize me in the 1850s. For generations, my blue flame heated reactions and sterilized instruments before many modern labs decided open flames next to ethanol were perhaps an unnecessarily exciting combination
What is a Bunsen burner?
200
I arrive at the ribosome carrying an amino acid and use my anticodon to recognize the message
What is tRNA?
200
Newly synthesized secreted proteins enter me, while ribosomes decorate my cytoplasmic surface
What is the rough endoplasmic reticulum?
200
Humans, whales and bats have forelimbs performing very different jobs, but the underlying bones reveal their shared evolutionary origin. These structures are called this
What are homologous structures?
200
A solution at pH 5 has this many times the hydrogen-ion concentration of a solution at pH 7
What is a 100 times
200
German bacteriologist Julius Richard ___ introduced me in the 1880s while working in Robert Koch's laboratory. More than a century later, people still write mysterious abbreviations on my lid
What is Petri dish?
300
I'm about 22 nucleotides long and can silence gene expression by guiding a protein complex to complementary mRNAs
What is miRNA?
300
Proteins arrive from the ER, get modified and sorted, then leave me in vesicles addressed to different cellular destinations
What is the Golgi apparatus?
300
A few individuals colonize an island. Generations later, their descendants have very different allele frequencies from the original mainland population, largely because the founding group was tiny.
What is the founder effect?
300
You cross Aa × Aa. Assuming simple Mendelian inheritance, this fraction of the offspring is expected to be homozygous recessive
What is 1/4th?
300
In 1957, Heinrich Schnitger patented an adjustable version of me that used a piston to accurately dispense small volumes. Today, researchers instinctively set me back to a larger volume before putting me away, or at least they should
What is micropipette?
400
One pre-mRNA can become several mature transcripts because different combinations of its exons are retained
What is alternative splicing?
400
My acidic interior contains digestive enzymes. Autophagosomes frequently end their journey by fusing with me
What is the lysosome?
400
A harmless species evolves to resemble a dangerous or unpalatable one, essentially borrowing somebody else's warning label
What is mimicry?
400
Glycolysis - one glucose molecule produces this net number of ATP molecules
What is 2?
400
Early versions required researchers to move samples manually between water baths. Once it became programmable, researchers could set it up and go do other things, like get lunch
What is PCR?
500
Long thought to be merely structural, I actually catalyze peptide-bond formation in the ribosome, making the ribosome fundamentally this type of catalytic RNA
What is a ribozyme?
500
Plants need to convert fatty acids into sugars during seed germination. This specialized peroxisome houses enzymes of the glyoxylate cycle
What is a glyoxysome?
500
Darwin's finches are an excellent example of this phenomenon that occurs when a species enters a new environment containing many unoccupied ecological niches
What is adaptive radiation?
500
Acetyl-CoA enters it, CO₂ leaves it, NADH and FADH₂ emerge, all happening in the powerhouse of the cell
What is the citric acid/Krebs/TCA cycle?
500
Before fluorescent dyes and automated sequencers, DNA sequencing often involved radioactive labels followed by separation on enormous polyacrylamide gels. This chain-termination method, developed in the 1970s, became the dominant sequencing technology for decades.
What is Sanger sequencing?