The Big World of RNAs

Biotechnology Chapter 5 Day 1 Questions

1. What is a ribozyme? What does the hammerhead ribozyme do and where did it get its name?  How does our definition of ribozyme get violated by hammerhead’s activity?  Name a ribozyme that doesn’t violate our ribozyme definition.
2. Piwi-interacting RNAs are highly expressed in testes. Given the textbook’s description of these small RNAs, why might this make sense from an evolutionary perspective?
3. The book doesn’t talk about CRISPR much, so watch these two videos to learn more:

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4. If a DNA oligonucleotide binds to an RNA target, what might happen? What enzyme (that we been talking about over the past couple of weeks) would do this?
5. MicroRNAs regulate gene expression “in trans”. What does this mean?  What is the other category of regulation?
6. Draw a diagram to show how to create an antisense transcript from a plasmid construct. How could you make a plasmid that makes two RNAs that form a double-stranded RNA?