Comprehension Questions

Section 14.1

Question 14.1

What is the concept of colinearity? In what way is this concept fulfilled in bacterial and eukaryotic cells?

Question 14.2

What are some characteristics of introns?

Question 14.3

What are the four basic types of introns? In which organisms are they found?

Section 14.2

Question 14.4

What are the three principal elements in mRNA sequences in bacterial cells?

Question 14.5

What is the function of the Shine–Dalgarno consensus sequence?

Question 14.6

(a) What is the 5′ cap? (b) How is the 5′ cap added to eukaryotic pre-mRNA? (c) What is the function of the 5′ cap?

Question 14.7

How is the poly(A) tail added to pre-mRNA? What is the purpose of the poly(A) tail?

Question 14.8

What makes up the spliceosome? What is the function of the spliceosome?

Question 14.9

Explain the process of pre-mRNA splicing in nuclear genes.

Question 14.10

Describe two types of alternative processing pathways. How do they lead to the production of multiple proteins from a single gene?

Question 14.11

What is RNA editing? Explain the role of guide RNAs in RNA editing.

Question 14.12

Summarize the different types of processing that can take place in pre-mRNA.

Section 14.3

Question 14.13

What are some of the modifications in tRNA that take place through processing?

Section 14.4

Question 14.14

Describe the basic structure of ribosomes in bacterial and eukaryotic cells.

Question 14.15

Explain how rRNA is processed.

Section 14.5

Question 14.16

What is the origin of small interfering RNAs, microRNAs, and Piwi-interacting RNAs? What do these RNA molecules do in the cell?

Question 14.17

What are some similarities and differences between siRNAs and miRNAs?

Question 14.18

How are miRNAs processed?

For more questions that test your comprehension of the key chapter concepts, go to for this chapter.