CHE 222 PS1 SOLUTION

1. Cell growth depends on nutrient uptake and waste disposal. You imagine therefore, that the rate of movement of nutrients and waste products across the cell membrane would be an important determinant of the rate of cell growth. Is there a correlation between a cells growth rate and its surface to volume ratio? Assuming that the cells are spheres, compare a bacterium (radius 1), which divides every 20 minutes, with a human cell (radius 10 ), which divides every 24 hours. Is there a match between the surface to volume ratio and the doubling times for these cells? (The volume of the sphere = (4/3)r3, the surface are = 4r2)

Answer:

A bacterium has 10 times more surface per volume of cytoplasm to allow the passage of nutrients in and waste products out. However, it grows 72 times faster than human cells, which suggests that something besides the available surface limits the rate of growth.

2. Natural selection is such a powerful force in evolution because cells with even a small growth advantage quickly outgrow their competitors. To illustrate this process, consider a cell culture that contains 106 bacterial cells that double every 20 minutes. A single cell in this culture acquires a mutation that allows it to divide with a generation time of only 15 minutes. Assuming that there is unlimited food supply and no cell death, how long would it take before the progeny ofthe mutated cell become predominant in the culture? Hint: The number of the cells N in the culture time t is described by the equation N= N02t/G where N0 is the number of cells at zero time and G is the generation time.

Answer: From the equation provided in the question, the number of the original (wild-type) bacterial cells at time t minutes after the mutation occurred is 106 x 2t/20. The number of mutant cells at time t is 2t/15. At the time when the mutant cells overtake the wild-type cells, these two numbers are equal.

Converting to base 10;

( ) ( )

Solving for t gives t=1200 minutes or 20 hours. It takes only 20 hours less than a day-before the mutant cells become more abundant in the culture. Note that it is also possible to solve this problem quickly, using the useful relationship 210103, by realizing that after 1 hour the mutant cells have doubled one more time than the wild-type cells. Thus, the mutant cells double relative to the wild-type cells once per hour. After 10 hours (210) the mutant cells would have gained a factor of thousand (103), and after 20 hours (220), a factor of a million (106), at which time they would be equal in number to the wild-type cells.

3. A phylogenetic tree represents the history of divergence of species from common ancestors. Construction of such trees from DNA or protein sequences can really only be done with computers: the data sets are enormous and algorithms are subtle. Nevertheless, some of the fundamental principles of tree construction can be illustrated with a simple example. Consider the first 30 amino acids of hemoglobin chains for the five species shown below. Human Frog Chicken Whale Fish YLSPADKTNV LLSADDKKHI VLSAADKNNV VLSPTDKSNV SLSDKDKAAV KAAWGKVGAH KAIMPAIAAH KGIFTKIAGH KATWAKIGNH RALWSKIGKS AGEYGAEALE GDKFGGEALY AEEYGAETLE GAEYGAEALE ADAIGNDALS

(Alignment of the first 30 amino acids of the hemoglobin chains in 5 species. Amino acids are represented by 5 letter code.) A. a common approach, known as distance matrix method, the first step is to construct a table of all pair-wise differences between the sequences. A partially filled example is shown in the table below. Complete the table by filling the blanks indicated by question marks. Species Human Frog Chicken Whale Fish Human 0 Frog ? 0 Chicken 12 ? 0 Whale 9 17 ? 0 Fish 17 20 20 ? 0

B. According to the information in this completed table, which pair of species is most closely related? What is the assumption that underlies your choice? C. The information in this table can be used to arrange species on the phylogenetic tree shown in the figure. The branching order is determined using a simple kind of cluster analysis. The two most similar species are placed on the adjacent branches at the upper left in the figure. The species with the fewest average differences relative to this pair is place on the next branch and so on. Use this method to arrange species on this tree.

Answer: A. Human Frog Frog Chicken Chicken Whale Whale Fish Species Human Frog Chicken Whale Fish YLSPADKTNV LLSADDKKHI LLSADDKKHI VLSAADKNNV VLSAADKNNV VLSPTDKSNV VLSPTDKSNV SLSDKDKAAV Human 0 KAAWGKVGAH KAIMPAIAAH KAIMPAIAAH KGIFTKIAGH KGIFTKIAGH KATWAKIGNH KATWAKIGNH RALWSKIGKS Frog 18 0 Chicken 12 17 0 AGEYGAEALE GDKFGGEALY GDKFGGEALY AEEYGAETLE AEEYGAETLE GAEYGAEALE GAEYGAEALE ADAIGNDALS Whale 9 17 12 0

18

17

12

17 Fish 17 20 20 17 0

B. Human and whale are the most closely related species since they have the least number of pair-wise difference (9) under the assumption that the number of differences in the given amino acid sequence provide a direct indication of the distance between them. C. Human & whale 9 differences Whale & chicken 12 differences Chicken & Frog 17 differences Chicken & fish 20 differences Frog & Fish 20 differences Chicken Frog Fish Human Whale