Chromosome Structure

1) What is a nucleosome? How can it influence the activity of a gene?

2) Describe the higher levels of structure that occur in eukaryotic chromosomes during prophase condensation.

3) What is the "c-value paradox", and what is the solution? In other words, what are eukaryotes doing with all their extra DNA?

4) Why do viruses typically have small genomes? How does the exception (the mimiviruses like Pandoravirus) support this idea?

5) What evidence supports the "viruses-late" hypothesis and the "viruses early" hypothesis?

6) The majority of our DNA is "repetitive DNA" many of these sequences are transposons. What are transposons?

7) What is a retrotransposon? What is their relationship to retroviruses?

8) What are pseudogenes?

9) How can the proliferation of transposons and retrotransposons both TURN ON and TURN OFF genes?