Reconstructing evolutionary relationships helps in differentiating between primitive and
derived characteristics.
Th2 cells produce a cytokine that promotes growth and activation of other T cells and
activates macrophages.
Poly-β-hydroxybutyric acid (PHB) is a carbon- and energy-storing polymer.
In general, lipids in archaeal cytoplasmic membranes lack true fatty acids.
An ecosystem includes both the living organisms and abiotic materials that function
together.
Despite viruses require a living host’s metabolism to replicate, it remains unclear
whether viruses existed before living cells.
For most purposes of studying bacterial isolates, viable counting usually gives accurate
information about the number of active cells present in a culture volume.
All unicellular organisms belong to the same domain of life.
Cholera begins following a bite from a mosquito.
Staphylococcus aureus produces carotenoids that neutralize singlet oxygen and prevent
killing.
Heterotrophic bacteria will run out of organic growth substrates in batch cultures but
chemostats can provide constant nutrient source for them to grow. Chemostats for
photoautotrophic bacteria are not necessary to maintain them at a constant growth phase
because a light can artificially be turned on constantly.
Antibodies are insoluble proteins.
The EIA test for HIV infection is a direct test for HIV envelope proteins.
Legionellosis, caused by the bacterial respiratory pathogen Legionella pneumophila,
has decreased in recent years due to advances in wastewater treatment procedures.
One hypothesis on the origin of DNA points to RNA viruses evolving a modified
nucleotide that is insensitive to ribonucleases.
The net result of electron transport is the generation of a pH gradient and an
electrochemical potential across the membrane.
A PCR assay has been developed for the detection of the bacterium (Borrelia
burgdorferi) that causes Lyme disease. Unfortunately this method cannot differentiate
between an active disease and a treated or inactive disease.
The light-harvesting pigments in Bacteria are classified as bacteriochlorophylls.
In general, swimming is performed with flagella, whereas gliding uses other cellular
components such as pili.
Protists that produce spores are especially difficult to kill because they contain cell
membranes that are resistant to common disinfecting chemicals.
Bioluminescence is a social behavior of bacterial cells that causes luminescence to
occur when a dense cell population has been attained.
Tetracycline and chloramphenicol are the drugs of choice for the treatment of many of
the rickettsial diseases.
Mass-processed ground meat is a particularly common source of infection with EHEC.
Budding is a form of reproduction whereby prokaryotic microbes can reproduce
sexually.
In general, most cell inclusions function as energy reserves or as a reservoir of
structural building blocks.
Diazotrophs are found in all three domains of life.
In an HIV infection the TH cells and macrophages are NOT commonly infected.
Many human-infecting viruses that illicit a strong immune response cause additional
harmful effects on humans, so the discovery of a virus that can induce an immune
response but not cause harm made it attractive for vaccine development.
One method to circumvent issues with introns when expression eukaryotic gene is a
bacterium is to simply clone the mature transcript.
In fast-growing Escherichia coli cells, multiple replication forks of genomic DNA
allows binary fission to occur before the genome has been fully duplicated.
The principle underlying how salmon were genetically engineered to grow faster is the
A) removal of a gene responsible for feeling full after eating.
B) replacement of inducible to constitutive hormone production.
C) resistance to bacterial infections which waste metabolic energy in the salmon to fight
off.
D) addition of genes to enhance blood circulation and tissue development.
The partition that is a result of the inward growth of the cytoplasmic membrane and cell
wall from opposing directions is known as the
A) divisome.
B) septum.
C) autolysin.
D) colony.
Myxobacteria display ________ behavior and form ________ that produce
myxospores.
A) gliding / slime trails
B) chemotactic / colonies
C) phototactic / slime trails
D) swarming / fruiting bodies
When the nontemplate strand of a gene is transcribed into RNA, what is likely to result?
A) A complementary sRNA will bind to it and form a functional ribozyme with
secondary structure.
B) It will complementary bind to the gene sequence, form a hairpin loop, and
transcriptionally repress the gene.
C) The complementary mRNA also transcribed from the template strand will bind to it
and halt its translation.
D) A global regulator will identify this as a stress, respond by inducing ribonuclease
production, and it will degraded.
What will happen if the Mu repressor is not synthesized?
A) Genome replication will not be able to occur.
B) It will lyse its host.
C) Mu will improperly synthesize its capsid.
D) Transposition will not be possible.
Which of the following diseases causes an influenza-like illness that can progress to
include pneumonia?
A) malaria
B) Q fever
C) typhus
D) Lyme disease
Which of the following methods do NOT involve nucleic acid hybridization?
A) RACE-FISH
B) FISH-MAR
C) phylochips
D) T-RFLP
In a natural population of diverse slow-growing prokaryotic cells, what type of viruses
would you expect to be most common?
A) lytic bacteriophages
B) enveloped viruses
C) icosahedral viruses
D) temperate bacteriophages
Influenza virus targets
A) respiratory epithelium.
B) gastrointestinal cells.
C) oral cavity cells.
D) throat epithelium.
Decalcification of the tooth enamel due to the production of high concentrations of
organic acids in the mouth is known as
A) degenerative plaque.
B) dental caries.
C) dental plaque.
D) microbial enamel decalcification.
Organisms that aerobically catabolize methane use the intermediate ________ for
biosynthesis and produce ________ when oxidizing the substrate for energy.
A) CH2O (formaldehyde) / CO
B) CH2O (formaldehyde) / CO2
C) HCOO− (formate) / CO
D) HCOO− (formate) / CO2
Which feature(s) differentiate(s) Actinobacteria from Firmicutes?
A) absence/presence of a cell wall
B) endospore production capability
C) motility and chemotaxis abilities
D) relative G+C content in their genomes
The photosynthetic pigments bacteriorhodopsin and proteorhodopsin are present in
________ and ________, respectively.
A) Archaea / Bacteria
B) Bacteria / Archaea
C) Bacteria / Bacteria
D) Bacteria / Eukarya
Some proteins overexpressed at high levels resulting in the formation of inclusion
bodies can abolish the goal of producing large quantities of active protein. What could
be done to minimize this issue?
A) Codon optimize the gene.
B) Decrease the number of biobricks in the vector.
C) Simultaneously produce intracellular chaperonins.
D) Switch to an expression host with a larger intracellular volume.
The microorganisms that are thought to resemble the first cellular forms of life on Earth
are
A) H2-oxidizing hyperthermophiles.
B) acidophilic Archaea.
C) the Nanoarchaeota.
D) fermentative thermophiles.
The study of antigen-antibody reactions is known as
A) serology.
B) immunology.
C) toxicology.
D) epidemiology.
Microorganisms were probably restricted to the oceans and subsurface environments
until
A) aquatic life brought them onto land.
B) chemoorganotrophy developed.
C) phototrophy evolved.
D) the ozone layer was made.
What is the largest carbon sink on Earth?
A) terrestrial biosphere
B) rocks and sediments
C) aquatic biosphere
D) fossil fuels
Which of the following does NOT influence immunogenicity?
A) the routes of administration
B) foreign nature of the immunogen to the host
C) solubility
D) All of these influence immunogenicity.
T cells interact with the peptide-MHC complex using
A) cytokines.
B) granzyme and perforin.
C) T-cell receptors.
D) the antibodies present on the surface of the cell.
Which organism causes the highest number of sexually transmitted diseases each year?
A) Neisseria gonorrhoeae
B) Treponema pallidum
C) Chlamydia trachomatis
D) Trichomonas vaginalis
Individuals who have an active case of tuberculosis may spread the disease simply by
________ uninfected individuals.
A) coughing near
B) shaking hands with
C) hugging
D) sexual contact with
A few bacteria are capable of growing on gases as the sole source of energy, carbon,
and nitrogen. Which of the following combination of gases would support the growth of
a bacterium in mineral media with NO other additions?
A) H2, N2, CO2
B) H2, O2, N2, CO2
C) H2, H2S, N2, CO2
D) H2, O2, N2O, CO2
Siderophores from some pathogens remove iron from the host protein(s)
A) lactoferrin.
B) transferrin.
C) both lactoferrin and transferrin.
D) cytochromes.
Loeffler’s medium inhibits the growth of MOST organisms and is commonly used to
cultivate
A) Corynebacterium diphtheriae.
B) Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
C) Mycobacterium leprae.
D) Staphylococcus aureus.
Well-designed microbial activity measurements can reveal ________ of major
metabolic reactions in a habitat.
A) types
B) rates
C) both types and rates
D) either types or rates (but not both)
The lipopolysaccharide (LPS) layer is found ONLY in the cell walls of
A) gram-positive Bacteria.
B) gram-negative Bacteria.
C) Archaea.
D) Eukarya.
The oxidation of ________ occurs both biotically and abiotically; however, at
________ pH values biotic oxidation is more common.
A) Si / low
B) ammonia / high
C) Fe2+ / low
D) Hgo / low
The rumen is an ________ habitat that depends on ________ to digest cellulose for
ruminant animals.
A) aerobic / cellulolytic fungi
B) aerobic / cellulolytic and fermentative bacteria
C) anaerobic / methanogens
D) anaerobic / cellulolytic and fermentative bacteria
Which of the following hypotheses could be tested using microautoradiography
fluorescence in situ hybridization (MAR-FISH)?
A) Bacteriorodopsin uses light energy to translocate protons.
B) Archaea are the main autotrophs in marine water samples taken 300m below the
surface of the ocean.
C) The microbial community of agricultural soils is more phylogenetically diverse than
the microbial community of native prairie soils.
D) The ammonia monooxygenase gene is present in members of the phylum
Verrucomicrobium.
With respect to their life cycles, how are fungal pathogens different than bacterial
pathogens?
How is immune memory beneficial to a host organism?
Explain the role of sigma factors in RNA synthesis in Bacteria.
How are trypanosome diseases similar to malaria? How are they different than malaria?
Proteobacteria members thrive in soils and occur at high concentrations as well. Other
bacterial taxa are considered much less diverse in terms of their metabolic capabilities.
Due to the role isolation has in discovering metabolic pathways, consider how obtaining
hundreds of new isolates from a less studied phylum might change our views on
metabolic diversity. Predict how the results of discovering another highly metabolically
diverse group might be handled in terms of taxonomic assignment.
Explain the function of cAMP in catabolite repression.
Cytophaga columnaris causes columnaris (or “cottonmouth”) disease in fish such as
salmon. Based on the taxonomic group this species is a part of, predict some of the
activities this bacterium has during infection of fish. Also mention a related taxon that
likely has some of the same functions and another taxon that does not.
There were numerous cases throughout the United States of patients having bloody
diarrhea all within a week of each other, many of which were hospitalized with severe
cases. Although the people spanned from California to New York, they all had attended
a high school graduation party. Epidemiologists determined the common food factor
was cheese curds homemade by a farmer. The home where the cheese curds were made
was searched, and the cheese curds and milk used to produce them were taken to the
local government lab. Among other microbes, Campylobacter jejuni was isolated from
many of the cheese curds as well as the farmer’s bulk tank milk. What should be done
for those infected? What can be done to prevent this from happening again?
Compare and contrast the origin and roles of B cells and T cells.
Why is energy required for nutrient transport? Give an example of a system that
transports nutrients and describe what source of energy is used to move the nutrients
into the cell.
Use the formulas N = N02n and g = t/n.
N = final cell number, N0 = initial cell number,
n = number of generations, t = time, g = generation time.
Find the generation time if N = 2 x 108, N0 = 3 x 106 and t = 3 hours.
Compare and contrast operon and protein fusions.
Explain why one cell of a pathogenic bacterium by itself typically does not secrete a
toxin, despite the species as a whole being characterized as toxin producing. To help in
your explanation, predict what would happen to an individual pathogen that secreted a
toxin inside a human.
Explain why larger genomes contain more genes devoted to regulation than smaller
genomes and why these genes increase the competitiveness of organisms.
A patient is waiting for a kidney transplant. In order for the transplant to be successful,
the donated kidney (the graft) must “match” with the recipient. What has to “match”
between the donor and the recipient? Why is matching tissue more difficult than
matching blood types?
What is convergent evolution and how is it different from horizontal gene transfer?