Problem Index:

• Chromosomes, DNA replication, and gene expression

  • Bacterial chromosomes
  • Central dogma: DNA replication, transcription, and translation

• Mutations and mutagenesis

  • Mutation frequency
  • Types of mutations

• Reversion and suppression

  • True reversion
  • Intragenic suppression
  • Intergenic suppression

• Cross-feeding, complementation analysis, and dominance

  • Cross-feeding
  • Complementation

• Recombination and genetic mapping

  • Homologous recombination
  • Two- and three-factor crosses
  • Deletion mapping

• Phage

  • Lysis
  • Lysogeny

• Plasmids

  • Replication and copy number
  • Incompatibility

• Genetic exchange

  • Conjugation
  • Transduction

    Generalized transduction

    Specialized transduction

  • Transformation
  • Barriers to genetic exchange - Restriction-modification

• Transposons

  • Transposition
  • Portable regions of homology
  • Fusions and reporter genes

• Genetic regulation

  • Analysis of regulatory mutants
  • Transcriptional initiation
  • Transcriptional termination
  • Translational regulation
  • Post-transcriptional regulation

• In vitro genetic analysis

  • DNA cloning and sequencing
  • Physical mapping
  • PCR and site-directed mutagenesis

Some good sources of additional microbial genetics problems include:

• Freifelder, D. 1983. Problems for Molecular Biology. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Boston.
• Maloy, S., J. Cronan, and D. Freifelder. 1994. Microbial Genetics (Second edition). Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Boston.
• Schleif, R. 1993. Genetics and Molecular Biology (Second edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
• Smith-Keary, P. 1989. Molecular Genetics of Escherichia coli. Guilford Press, NY.

For more background on many of these topics, see the Microbial Genetics supplement.

Problem solving plays an integral role in teaching microbial genetics, but developing a large bank of problems is very time consuming. Thus, this web site was designed as a Co-op to provide a continually evolving collection of microbial genetics problems that could be freely used by anyone interested.

Please use any of these problems or contribute problems you think others may find useful. The only restriction is that the questions must not be copywrited. If you have any comments or would like to submit problems (send both the question and your solution) please send them via email to the address shown at the bottom of this page. Unless you indicate that you wish to remain anonymous, I will indicate your name in the problem.

Please send comments, suggestions, or questions to smaloy@sciences.sdsu.edu
Last modified July 2, 2004