You are a researcher at a small biotech company and your company has just obtain

Question

You are a researcher at a small biotech company and your company has just obtained the license for use of a human GENOMIC DNA fragment putatively encoding a potentially novel protein, which is thought to regulate p53, the known tumor supressor protein. The scientists who originally cloned this GENE fragment HDM5 "claim" that HDM5 shares 90% DNA sequence homology with one of the HDM2 genes (refer to the review Levine & Oren, 2009). They propose that HDM5 may have HDM2-like properties and may be involved in regulating cell proliferation, and thus a good target to potentially develop as a cancer therapy. Your company has asked you to characterize the gene and gene products, as well as to provide an opinion as to its potential human therapeutic uses.

1. If this gene fragment HDM5 shares 90% DNA sequence similarity with HDM2 human genes, would it necessarily share 90% amino acid sequence similarity? Why or why not? Explain your reasoning thoroughly, and include a definition of the degeneracy of the DNA code.

Explanation / Answer

1.Yes there would be 90% aminoacid similarity.This is because the codons specify the aminoacid sequence of the proteins.Since there is 90% DNA sequence similarity between the two fragments, it means the DNA sequences of both the fragments would also specify the same aminoacid sequence. If the case would have been opposite i.e the two fragments share 90% aminoacid sequence similarity,then there probably would not be 90% DNA sequence similaritybetween the two fragments as degeneracy of the DNA code would bring a change in the sequence of the two DNA fragements.Degeneracy is defined as the phenomenon in which one aminoacid is coded by more than one codon.For example GAA and GAG codons both specify same aminoacid i.e glutamic acid.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse Y
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.