Chapter 24: The New Science of Life



Chapter 24

The New Science of Live:

Can we cure cancer?

1. What is a marketed use of genetic engineering?

a. insecticides

b. insulin

c. herbicides

d. cleaning up oil spills

e. all of the above

Ans: e

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

2. Strawberries have been genetically engineered

a. as hybrids with blueberries.

b. in a variety of colors.

c. to resist frost.

d. for faster growth.

e. for medical research.

Ans: c

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

3. What is the underlying principle of biotechnology?

a. All life is based on the same genetic code.

b. Plant and animal genes are not interchangeable.

c. Bacteria are the "workhorses" of the molecular world.

d. Scientists need a strong moral code to work as genetic engineers.

e. Selective breeding must be carefully controlled.

Ans: a

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

4. DNA fingerprinting works to identify criminals because

a. all individuals have the same DNA.

b. no two individuals, except for identical twins, have the same DNA.

c. all individuals have unique DNA.

d. DNA samples are readily available from suspects.

e. DNA can be used to create a criminal profile.

Ans: b

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. DNA can be found in all samples EXCEPT

a. saliva.

b. blood.

c. semen.

d. hair shaft.

e. All of the above contain DNA.

Ans: d

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

6. Variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) sequences

a. do not code for a specific amino acid.

b. are repeated "nonsense" phrases of DNA bases

c. repeat up to 256 times, depending on the individual.

d. all of the above

e. only b & c

Ans: d

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

7. The controversy about the admissibility of DNA evidence to a court of law

a. has not been resolved to the satisfaction of defense attorneys.

b. was settled following a well-publicized murder trial.

c. has abated since a 1992 report issued by the National Academy of Sciences wrote guidelines for DNA evidence.

d. can never be resolved because all ethnic groups share some DNA characteristics.

e. is a moot argument because of the exorbitant expense of DNA testing.

Ans: c

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

8. Genetic diseases are usually caused by

a. the presence of a particular enzyme.

b. the lack of a particular protein.

c. an incorrect sequence of bases in a gene.

d. a defective gene on chromosome 7.

e. b & c

Ans: e

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

9. Since the advent of gene therapy for genetic diseases,

a. general practitioners have been more successful in curing some inherited diseases.

b. physicians have disregarded symptom-based treatment in favor of biotechnology.

c. Health Management Organizations have funded most of the experimental treatments and genetic research projects.

d. clinics have reported positive results doing in vitro gene therapy research.

e. new medical techniques for widespread diseases have been perfected.

Ans: d

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

10. What has affected the preliminary results from some recently initiated gene therapy trials?

a. The laboratories have not had enough time to develop a gene-therapy protocol.

b. Congress is hesitant to fund any more experimental programs at the National Institutes of Health.

c. Cells into which corrected genes are introduced cannot find and copy these genes to make new proteins.

d. There is a voluntary moratorium on gene therapy research because of the fear of introducing a toxic gene into the environment.

e. Drug companies are stalling the research projects until they can get assurances about development patents.

Ans: c

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

11. What is cancer?

a. a potentially fatal bacterial infection

b. a disease characterized by rampant cell growth

c. a genetic defect expressed in bone or tissue

d. a condition in which cell membranes disintegrate

e. a disease caused by an injury to the mitochondria

Ans: b

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

12. Which of the following can damage DNA?

a. the byproducts of cellular respiration

b. several varieties of oxidants

c. molecules from some processed foods

d. high energy radiation

e. all of the above

Ans: e

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

13. Which procedure would forensic scientists use when the laboratory needs a larger sample of DNA to run an analysis?

a. radioactive isotope tagging

b. variable number tandem repeats (VNTR)

c. cloning

d. polymerase chain reactions (PCR)

e. gene splicing

Ans: d

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

14. According to recent scientific research, how many times a day does the DNA in each body cell need to be repaired?

a. 10

b. 100

c. 1,000

d. 10,000

e. 100,000

Ans: d

Link To: Unraveling the Past: Mitochondrial DNA

Difficulty Level: Easy

15. What is distinctive about the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)?

a. This virus destroys the body's main defense system.

b. Research on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus is at the molecular level and on a global scale.

c. The HIV has two protein coats with different functions.

d. Research to block the HIV life cycle has led to the successful development of protease inhibiters.

e. all of the above

Ans: e

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

16. Computer Assisted Drug Design is expanding because of

a. environmental efforts to save the tropical rain forests.

b. early success in the development of protease inhibitors.

c. better "cork" and "bottle" analogies.

d. advances in the search techniques for natural molecules.

e. tighter quality control in the computer industries.

Ans: b

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

17. How does penicillin control bacterial infections?

a. blocks the molecule that constructs the cell walls of the bacteria cells

b. circumvents the bacterial meiosis stage

c. increases the number of white blood cells

d. forms a protein coating around the bacteria cells

e. strengthens the body's immune system

Ans: a

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

18. What is a point defect?

a. the byproduct of cellular respiration

b. a mistake in the order of DNA bases

c. a slip in the DNA strand

d. an enzyme patrolling the cytoplasm

e. a mismatch in the double helix at a site

Ans: b

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

19. What does a protease inhibitor do?

a. dissolves the virus wall in HIV

b. enhances the body's auto immune system

c. blocks the enzyme that controls insertion of HIV material into the cell

d. protects the organism from infection

e. cuts the HIV into many pieces

Ans: c

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

20. A cancerous cell

a. is ingested when a person consumes genetically engineered tomatoes and corn.

b. is a natural occurrence in most people.

c. is a normal cell that has experienced chromosomal damage.

d. can be more common in persons with genetic defects.

e. all of the above

Ans: c

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Easy

21. There is a low probability of any single cell in your body acquiring the defects to become cancerous.

Ans: True

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

22. More than 99% of the pesticides we take in each day are commercially produced.

Ans: False

Link To: Unraveling the Past: Mitochondrial DNA

Difficulty Level: Easy

23. A genetic disease can be described as a defect in the protein of DNA.

Ans: True

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

24. Gene therapy is an ordinary research application rather than a research frontier

Ans: False

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

25. Genetic engineering is based in part on the study of how viruses manipulate the cell replication processes.

Ans: True

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

26. Scientists are using therapeutic viruses to insert site-specific healthy genes into cells with damaged genes.

Ans: True

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

27. A cell will not become a cancer cell with only one gene abnormality.

Ans: True

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

28. Computer designed drugs will greatly decrease the time and increase the efficiency of drug research and development.

Ans: True

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

29. Because of the extensive global effort, finding a cure for AIDS has been much easier than health professionals originally thought.

Ans: False

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

30. Pluripotent cells are valuable to research because of their ability to become any tissue.

Ans: True

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

31. All cloning is reproductive cloning.

Ans: False

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

32. Although oxidants are a natural byproduct of cellular respiration, they can be harmful to the DNA of the cell nucleus.

Ans: True

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

33. The first animal cloned was a fruit fly.

Ans: False

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Easy

34. How do most modern medicines work?

a. When patients have faith in their doctors, medicines will bring about desired physical changes.

b. Medicines are molecules shaped in a way that can alter cell chemistry.

c. All medicines are essentially placebos; patients ultimately heal themselves.

d. All of the above describe how medicines work.

e. None of the above describes how medicines work.

Ans: b

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Medium

35. Why is a drug production gap of concern to medical science?

a. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have evolved.

b. Doctors cannot locate effective drugs in the quantity needed.

c. Trained research pharmacists have gone to other careers.

d. Patients have become more aware of alternative medical treatments.

e. Viruses have mutated to new and more deadly forms.

Ans: a

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Medium

37. Why are genetic researchers NOT worried about the bacteria E. coli escaping into the natural environment?

a. E. coli is a harmless bacteria outside the human intestine.

b. The research strain of E. coli bacteria is dependent on a laboratory environment to survive.

c. Researchers have developed an antibiotic spray for any and all possible E. coli mutations.

d. Laboratory researchers have a triple fail-safe protocol for containing E. coli bacteria.

e. E. coli has a gene that causes it to be sterile in a natural environment.

Ans: b

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Medium

38. Genetic engineering is based on the fact that all life shares the same interchangeable code.

Ans: True

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Medium

39. Since double-blind clinical trials have a secret code for the drugs tested, there is no need to match the participants for age.

Ans: False

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Medium

40. What is a good working definition of genetic engineering?

Ans: Genetic engineering is a procedure to modify the function of an organism by altering the organism's genes in some way or by inserting foreign genes into the DNA of the organism.

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Medium

41. How does a cell repair itself in a natural system?

Ans: The DNA in a cell has two mechanisms for self-repair. First, patrolling enzymes in the nucleus detect point defects, which can be removed by a separate enzyme. The cell then replicates in a normal way. Second, bases on the DNA double helix can be mismatched with their complement on the other side of the ladder. This requires a specific enzyme to remove that section. Again, following the repair by the enzyme, the cell goes through a normal cell cycle.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Medium

42. What is Computer Assisted Drug Design? How does it work?

Ans: Modern computers can be programmed to know the chemistry of a condition and discover the shape of the molecules involved in that condition. Drugs are designed specifically to match the shape or geometry of a certain molecule. Once that shape has been identified the researchers develop a therapeutic molecule of the same shape, which will eliminate or alleviate the symptoms of a targeted disease or condition.

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Medium

43. How is a cancer cell different from a normal cell?

Ans: All cells go through a cycle of several stages prior to replication. During and at the end of each cycle there are special molecules that conduct a quality control check of the process. If damage is found at any point in a normal cell, the cell will be fixed or destroyed. Cancer cells lack this quality control and replicate out of control with the defect retained.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Medium

44. What is the difference between in vitro and in vivo gene therapy?

a. In vivo is a computer-designed procedure that has never been tried while in vitro has been in practice two decades.

b. In vivo is a process completed outside the human body and in vitro takes place inside the human body.

c. In vitro is a process completed outside the human body and in vivo takes place inside the human body.

d. In vitro is a computer-designed procedure that has never been tried while in vivo has been in practice two decades.

e. These procedures are the same.

Ans: c

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

45. Which is the strain of bacteria that has become resistant to most antibiotics commercially available?

a. E. coli

b. the HIV-AIDS bacteria

c. Streptococcus

d. Tuberculococcus

e. Staphylococcus

Ans: e

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Hard

46. Explain the rationale of double-blind clinical trials.

Ans: Medical researchers use double-blind clinical trials to validate the results of the experiment. In these trials a placebo is given to one group and the experimental drug to another. Since neither the patients nor the researchers know who is receiving the real drug, the results cannot be influenced by psychological clues. Double-blind experiments help to ensure the objectivity expected in medical research.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

47. How is a molecule's geometry used to an advantage in Computer Assisted Drug Design?

Ans: The computer can eliminate time-consuming trial and error in laboratory trials by designing a drug that will fit the geometric specifications of the molecule identified with the condition or disease.

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Hard

48. How does a protease inhibitor control the virus that causes AIDS?

Ans: Before a host cell can be forced to manufacture new virus material for the AIDS virus, the viral DNA has to be inserted into the host cell. Certain proteins (protease) act as enzymes for this insertion process. The protease inhibitor does not allow these enzymes to function, thus stopping the introduction of the virus.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

49. How have antibiotics become less effective since their introduction?

Ans: Within any particular bacteria population, a few bacteria will have the capacity to develop a resistance to an antibiotic. These bacteria will multiply once their competition has been wiped out. If drug companies do not continually develop new antibiotics, some bacteria will be drug resistant. The overuse of antibiotics and the research gaps in development have led to new strains of drug-resistant bacteria in the 1990s

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Hard

50. Describe the procedure used to clone Dolly the sheep.

Ans: A cell from one adult sheep was fused with an unfertilized egg from a sheep of a different species. An electric shock bonded the two cells. When the cell began to divide normally, it was inserted into a third sheep, which served as the surrogate "mother" of the clone. The cloned sheep had DNA identical to the first sheep and different from the egg donor and the surrogate. The unfertilized egg was used to "turn on" the replication process in the donor cell.

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

51. Outline the arguments and controversy about stem cell research.

Ans: Embryonic stem cells, also called pluripotent cells, are fertilized cells in their first few days of existence. The unique quality of stem cells is their ability to become any type of tissue. Medical research is trying to use stem cells to produce, for example, nerve cells for quadriplegics, organs for transplants, and neurotransmitters for patients with Parkinson's. Since embryos are the source of these cells, the research is of great concern to persons who believe that life begins with conception. Using these cells, in their opinion, is destroying life.

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

52. Explain the statement, "Whenever fundamental new insights into the workings of nature have been gained in the past, major changes in the human condition have followed."

Ans: Answers will vary. New knowledge is many times translated into medical techniques and materials that prolong human life.

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Hard

53. Pretend that you are the scientific head of a biotechnology research laboratory. What are the steps you would recommend for cloning a cow? Use the principles of cell biology discussed in this chapter in your scientific protocol.

Ans: Answers should parallel the techniques for cloning Dolly.

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

54. Pretend that you are the CEO of a biotechnological research laboratory.

Even though you must defend the expenses of a failed cloning experiment at the annual meeting of the board of directors, you must also ask for a continuation of funding for this research. Write a speech that will convince the board and accomplish both your goals.

Ans: Answers will vary but should include the positive gains made in a ‘failed’ experiment plus materials/equipment necessary to produce a ‘successful’ experiment.

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

55. Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton is the fictitious story of a genetically engineered microscopic toxic life form that escapes into a populated environment. The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is the true story of a lethal virus capable of killing primates, including humans, which was discovered in a primate laboratory near Washington, DC. What steps would the federal government, a private citizen, and a biotechnological researcher at the Center for Disease Control take to eliminate the problems these books describe?

Ans: Answers will vary but should include issues such as evolution of strains of bacteria and/or virus plus various sanitary methods necessary to control disease.

Link To: The Technology of Genes

Difficulty Level: Hard

56. Industrialized nations have agreed to limit the production of CFCs, which are known to destroy the protective layer of our upper atmospheric ozone. If sunscreens can be developed to block harmful ultraviolet rays and therapeutic viruses can be created to cure skin cancer, would you recommend the reintroduction of CFC production? Defend your answer.

Ans: Answers will vary but may include the possibility of new diseases developing once old ones are eliminated plus other problems the introduction of CFC into the environment could cause.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

57. Design a double-blind clinical trial to determine how a cold virus is spread in the population.

Ans: Answers will vary but should take into consideration how one keeps the participants involved in the study and their treatments secure so as not to influence the results of the test.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

58. Discuss the ethical and practical issues surrounding success in such an experiment.

Ans: Answers will vary but should include security of participant identification plus how to maintain accurate records.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

59. What makes the HIV virus "sloppy" and how does the cell's poor quality control lead to its success in the human host?

Ans: The HIV virus can use any one of several proteins that are available in its human host rather than being genetically ‘keyed’ to a single protein.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

60. Should sperm from sperm banks be used to fertilize harvested eggs for use in stem cell research? Why or why not.

Ans: Since this is an ethical issue answers will vary.

Link To: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Regenerative Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

61. Stamping out disease is one of the goals of medicine. What are the pros and cons of this goal?

Ans: Answers will vary. As we find ways to eliminate more disease and extend human life, we put more pressure on society and the environment to support an increased population.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

62. One of the possibilities of stem cell research might be to create organs for use as ‘spare parts’. Is this a good idea? Why or why not?

Ans: Answers will vary. The good side of this is that no one would have to wait for organ donors; the down side is that spare parts can become so common that people won’t bother to take care of their health.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

63. We are close to being able to store anyone’s DNA at birth. Is this a good idea or not? Justify your answer.

Ans: Answers will vary. Knowing someone’s DNA could allow a disease to be diagnosed ahead of time; this personal information could also lead to discrimination.

Link To: The New Face of Medicine

Difficulty Level: Hard

64. If there actually was a ‘Chromosomal Adam’, he probably didn’t live at the same time as ‘Mitochondrial Eve’, and therefore couldn’t have known her, much less fathered her children.” Why or why not?

Ans: Answers will vary but should include information about evolution of humans.

Link To: Unraveling the Past: Mitochondrial DNA

Difficulty Level: Hard

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