Your super-nice roommate is working in a lab trying to bring back the wooly mamm
ID: 190212 • Letter: Y
Question
Your super-nice roommate is working in a lab trying to bring back the wooly mammoth through reproductive cloning. He describes an experiment to in which they treated cells with a drug that interferes with the enzymatic activity of a DNA methylase enzyme, DNMT1. Experiment 1: They treated cells with this drug for 3 hours without allowing the cells to divide, then isolated the cell's nucleus and injected that nucleus into an enucleated oocyte. They checked to see how many of those nuclei could direct development of a cloned embryo. Result: there was no improvement in the success rate of the reproductive cloning experiment. Experiment 2: They treated cells with this drug for 3 hours allowing the cells to divide in the presence of the drug. These cells divide every 20 minutes. They then isolated nuclei and injected into enucleated oocytes with one of these nuclei. Result: the success rate in Experiment 2 was significantly improved compared to Experiment 1 with more nuclei able to support development of a cloned embryo. Question: With what you know about DNA methylation, explain why the effect of the drug is different in the two experiments.Explanation / Answer
Ans- in the first case cells was not allowed to divide so no DNA methylation occured in the first case and as we know if DNA methylation is not properly occuring it may result in cell death but in second case cells were allowed to divide and they were able to differentiate themselves and DNA methylation helps to make them transcriptable due to which they become able to grow.
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