- Joined
- Dec 22, 2011
- Messages
- 57
- Reaction score
- 0
This is from BR Bio Section IX (Genetic Information), Passage VII, Question 39:
A given culture of mammalian DNA has 1.2 meters of duplex DNA in each cell and the DNA synthesis phase for these cells is 5 hours. How many replication forks are there, if the growth rate in these cells is 16 um/minute?
Here's how I solved it:
1.2 meters / 5 hours = 0.24 meters/hour = 240,000 um/hour = 4000 um/min
4000 um/min / 16 um/min = 250 forks
But now, shouldn't the answer actually be roughly 125 forks, because each fork provides roughly 2x the rate of replication?
Also, in a similar light, if a strand of DNA has 4000 kilobase pairs and each Okazaki fragment is 1 kilobase long, wouldn't there be 8000 Okazaki fragments? 4000 kb / 1 kb x 2 (because there are two strands
A given culture of mammalian DNA has 1.2 meters of duplex DNA in each cell and the DNA synthesis phase for these cells is 5 hours. How many replication forks are there, if the growth rate in these cells is 16 um/minute?
Here's how I solved it:
1.2 meters / 5 hours = 0.24 meters/hour = 240,000 um/hour = 4000 um/min
4000 um/min / 16 um/min = 250 forks
But now, shouldn't the answer actually be roughly 125 forks, because each fork provides roughly 2x the rate of replication?
Also, in a similar light, if a strand of DNA has 4000 kilobase pairs and each Okazaki fragment is 1 kilobase long, wouldn't there be 8000 Okazaki fragments? 4000 kb / 1 kb x 2 (because there are two strands
Last edited: