Questions and Answers of Botany An Introduction To Plant Biology

In contrast to the endosymbiont theory is the autogenous theory. Describe the basic idea of it. Do you think that the autogenous theory would predict that plastids and mitochondria would have DNA and
Why do we think that cyanobacteria rather than purple or green bacteria gave rise to chloroplasts in the primary endosymbiosis? Which cyanobacteria are most similar to chloroplasts? Which algae were
Question 6 indicated that chloroplasts arose several distinct times in separate acts of endosymbiosis. If that is true, does the term “plastid” refer to a natural group of organelles that
List some of the unusual cyanobacterial features of red algal chloroplasts.
Describe cell division and mitosis in algae. How is the red alga method of cross-wall formation different from that of plants?
If after cell division the cells adhere to each other loosely, the resulting structure is a ___________________, not an individual organism. In such a structure, are there many types of different
Name and describe the six types of body construction that occur in green algae. What role does the middle lamella play in these? What is the importance of controlling the orientation of cell
Describe monobiontic and dibiontic life cycles. Be careful to mention all possible types. What is the difference between a spore and a gamete? What is the difference between a spore and a zygote?
What is an alternation of isomorphic generations? What is an alternation of heteromorphic generations? If you have studied the life cycle of flowering plants, do flowering plants have an alternation
Describe a green alga with a life cycle involving alternation of heteromorphic generations. Why were the two generations originally named as separate species?
Volvox is a green alga that you might see in a biology or botany lab. Is it filamentous or membranous or colonial? What is its shape?
Spirogyra is another green alga you might see in a biology or botany lab. What is unusual about it? What gives it its name?
Chara is an unusual alga. What type of cell division do members of Charophyceae undergo—division with a phycoplast or phragmoplast? What is important about their flagella? Do true plants
Red algae are unusual in many ways, but an especially significant trait is the types of accessory pigments in their chloroplasts. What pigments do they have? They are aggregated into a body called a
Many red algae have cell walls so heavily impregnated with calcium carbonate that they are brittle. These are called the ___________________ red algae.
What are trumpet cells in brown algae? What type of cells do they resemble in true plants? Is their presence in brown algae a sign that brown algae are related to the ancestors of true plants, or is
If you have ever visited a rocky coast, you may have seen two brown algae—kelps and Fucus (these never occur on sandy beaches). Briefly describe the bodies of these two common seaweeds.
Dinoflagellates are abundant algae with many unusual features. The arrangement of their flagella is characteristic. Describe the flagella of a typical dinoflagellate.
Under ideal conditions, dinoflagellates can reproduce so rapidly that they actually give seawater a distinct color. What is this phenomenon called? Is it safe for fish and humans?
Diatoms have what chemical in their cell walls? When the cell dies and the protoplasm degenerates, the wall sinks to the ocean bottom and becomes part of a huge deposit known as ___________________.
Describe and compare the cell walls or cell coverings of dinoflagellates, euglenoids, diatoms, green algae, red algae, and true plants.
Describe features of oomycetes that caused people to believe they were fungi (these are believed to be homoplasies). Now describe feature that indicate they are heterokont algae (these are believed
The structural portion of genes contains two distinct types of regions— exons and introns. Which consists of codons that are eventually translated into the amino acid sequence of a protein, and
Most plants are so large their bodies exist in several different environments. What does this mean? Give examples for a single plant.
For a stimulus to cause a plant to change its metabolism or development, there must be three actions: _____________ ________________, __________________________, and _______________________.
Before a plant can respond to environmental factors, they must be perceived. Give examples of several environmental cues that plants perceive.
After a plant perceives a stimulus and before it can respond, there is another step called _____________ ___________. What happens in this step?
Name five environmental factors that plants detect as stimuli. In each case, what types of information are provided to the plant?
Different prefixes are used for various stimuli. What is the prefix for each of the following:a. Lightb. Gravityc. Touchd. Chemical
Responses can be either of two types: __________________- _________________-_______________ and __________________- _________________.
How does a positive tropic response differ from a negative tropic response? What is a diatropic response?
How does a nastic response differ from a tropic response? What is a morphogenic response?
In the perception of a stimulus, what are presentation time and threshold?
What is an all-or-none response? Give some examples of plants that flower with an all-or-none response.
What are the four ways that a plant can respond to a stimulus? Define and give examples of each. Why are some responses classified as “positive,” “negative,” or “plagio-,” whereas others
What is a dosage-dependent response? Name some plants that flower this way.
Almost all plant communication is by a slow mechanism. What is the mechanism?
Name the known classes of plant hormones. What are the characteristics of plant hormones?
Name one natural auxin: _______________________.
The concentration of substances as powerful as hormones can be controlled by three methods in plants. What are the three methods?
Auxin, like many substances, can be transported through the phloem; however, there is a second mechanism that exists just for auxin transport. What is it?
Like auxin, cytokinins are involved in dozens of responses in all parts of the plant. Name one important response.
About how many gibberellins are known to exist? Are all of them active hormones?
What is the only gaseous hormone? How is it involved in fruit ripening?
What is apical dominance? How is auxin involved?
Describe the mechanism by which auxin appears to control leaf abscission.
Studies of phototropism often use which part of an oat seedling: _________________?
True or false: Despite years of intensive research, we still do not have even an outline of the mechanism that actually causes plants to begin producing flowers.
Almost all plants must reach a certain age before they can be induced to flower. Before that point, they are said to be in the __________________ stage. Afterward, when they can be induced, they are
Light is often the most important environmental factor for inducing a plant to flower, but it is not the intensity of light. What it the important aspect?
What are long-day plants? Short-day plants? Day-neutral plants? What is the critical night length?
Which pigment is responsible for detecting presence or absence of light? What are its two forms?
We know that short-day plants do not really need short days, but actually long nights. Describe the type of treatment that proves this. Is some kind of light given during the night or some period of
List eight metabolic processes that undergo endogenous rhythms in plants.
If an endogenous rhythm has a period of about 24 hours long, we say it is a _________________ rhythm.
Imagine a short-day plant (really a long-night plant) being given continuous darkness. If it is given a flash of red light at a time when its endogenous rhythm would be “expecting” daylight, will
Plants are composed of numerous types of cells that are all unique because they have distinct metabolisms. What are these metabolisms based on?
Because an organism grows by duplication division, all its cells have (choose one: identical, unique) genes.
What is meant by the differential activation of genes? Explain how this affects the synthesis of cutin and P-protein.
Cutin, lignin, and chlorophyll are not proteins. How is it possible for genes to control the synthesis of these polymers?
A gene is made up of (choose one: RNA, protein, DNA, carbohydrate).
For each of these symbols, write out the full name of the base and of the nucleoside. Indicate which are components of DNA and which are components of RNA:a. Tb. Ac. Gd. Ce. U
The text describes three important ways that cells protect their genes. List these methods.
DNA does not participate directly in the synthesis of proteins. What molecule transfers the information in DNA to the site of protein synthesis?
Histones are proteins in the nucleus, and DNA wraps around them forming a spherical structure. What is the name of the structure?
What is the name of the enzyme that digests DNA?
Some things that we call fruits are not true fruits but instead are accessory (false) fruits. What is the red part of a strawberry, and what are the true strawberry fruits (See Figure 9-32A)? In an
What is unusual about the answers for Questions 13k, 13l, 13m, and 13n? Because the multiple codons exist for most amino acids, the genetic code is said to be _____________.Question 13k:Examine Table
Examine Table 15-2. What do the following codons specify:a. UAAb. UGAc. UAGWhat happens when a ribosome comes to one of these codons? Table 15-2 TABLE 15-2 The Codons of mRNA
Examine Table 15-2. The codon AUG codes for the amino acid methionine and also for “start.” What does “start” mean? Table 15-2 TABLE 15-2 The Codons of mRNA
Describe the promoter and structural region of a nuclear gene. What is a TATA box? What are exons and introns?
After RNA polymerase binds to DNA, it begins making mRNA. What is the name of this process?
What is the name of the cytoplasmic particles that translate mRNA into proteins? What type of RNA brings amino acids to this particle? This RNA has a region called an anticodon. What does the
What is a frameshift error? Does the binding of methionine tRNA to the small subunit help reduce frameshift errors? If so, how?
Imagine that plastid DNA of species A is treated with a restriction endonuclease in order to make a restriction map. Now imagine that species B is not very closely related to species A, but species C
If mRNA is extracted from a plant and mixed with reverse transcriptase, what is the name of the DNA that is produced? If it was synthesized with radioactive nucleotides, what can be done with it?
Briefly describe how a piece of DNA can be cloned using bacteria. Why would it be important to use the same type of restriction endonuclease in the harvest phase as in the preparation phase? After
Briefly describe how a piece of DNA can be cloned using PCR.
In the genetic engineering of plants, after a gene and promoter have been prepared, they must be inserted into the plant with an insertion vector. A very important vector comes from Agrobacterium
What is an allele? Do all genes come in only one form such that every plant that has that gene has exactly the same nucleotide sequence? Look at the gene in FIGURE 16-26. How do the various alleles
Corn has been genetically engineered to produce the anti-insect poison of a bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. What is one benefit of this? What are some of the risks?
Viruses are extremely small particles that usually contain only ____________________ and____________________ _________.
The diversity of nucleic acids in plant viruses is great. Which class of viruses contain single-stranded RNA? These viruses are the source of which important enzyme (This is the enzyme needed to make
What is the phenotype of a plant? Can you see it? Measure it? Describe it. (Could you describe the phenotype of a geranium well enough to distinguish it from a maple tree?) What is the genotype of a
As DNA replication begins, chromatin becomes less compact. Why?
When DNA is read by RNA synthase, mRNA is made. What is the name of the enzyme that reads DNA and makes more DNA?
Describe DNA replication. What are Okazaki fragments? Why does each chromosome have thousands of replication start sites instead of just one?
Name the types of mutations that may occur and describe how some of them happen. With regard to UV-induced mutations, think about the fact that most leaves last for just a few months and then are
Examine the value for lily in Table 16-1. How many billion pairs of nucleotides are there in a diploid nucleus? If DNA synthase is very accurate and if DNA repair mechanisms are so good that, on
What is the name of a mutation that occurs in a cell that never leads to sex cells? Why is this type of mutation less important than one that affects gametes?
Imagine that as a leaf is growing, one of its cells is hit by ultraviolet light, which causes a mutation in a gene that is involved in producing flower pigments. Will that be an important mutation?
Imagine you are given two tall plants, but you do not know their genotype (see Figure 16-12). There are three possibilities—they might both be TT or both Tt or one TT and the other Tt. Imagine you
There are pieces of DNA that readily change their position from one chromosome to another. These are called.____________________________________________ When one of these moves to a new position, it
What are monohybrid crosses? Is it possible to make a cross in which only one single character is actually involved, or is it just that one single character is being analyzed and the others are being
Imagine you are crossing two plants that have these two genotypes—Tt and tt. What are the two genotypes of the gametes that the Tt plant can make? What is the one genotype of the gametes that the
In a field you find three types of the same plant: some with long leaves, some with short leaves, and some of intermediate length. What would you suspect to be the genotypes of each? You measure
When traits show complete dominance, the genotype can be revealed by a test cross. In the example of tall and dwarf plants (Figure 16-14) why is it necessary to use the dwarf parent? In general, why
What is a test cross? Why do we have to use it? When we just look at a plant, can we see its genotype? Can we see its phenotype?
We say that genes that are close together on the same chromosome are linked. What does that mean? Imagine that in a diploid nucleus, one chromosome has the allele R and right next to it on the same
The answer to Question 23 will be different if R and T are very far apart on their chromosome (and if that is true, then automatically r and t will also be very far apart on their chromosome). If it

Showing 200 - 300 of 724