Lesson 2.

1 Learning Task Worksheet

These questions should help you to review the content and skills that you learned by reading
Chapter 2 of your textbook and completing all of the lesson activities.

● Read each question carefully.

● Complete each question thoroughly.
● Turn in your completed worksheet to your teacher.

1. What are the major structural differences between DNA and RNA?

2. Why did scientists in the early 1900s think that proteins were most likely the genetic material
of living things?

3. What evidence supports DNA as the hereditary material of cells?

4. Why did a mixture of heat-killed S cells and living R cells result in the death of mice in
Frederick Griffith’s research?

5. How would the results of Hershey and Chase’s T2 phage experiment have been different if
protein had been the genetic material of cells?

6. How does the structure of DNA differ between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells?
7. What are the different roles of helicase, SSBP’s, topoisomerase, DNA polymerase, primase,
and ligase in the DNA replication process?

8. Why does DNA replication require both a continuous (leading) and discontinuous (lagging)
strand? What evidence exists to show this?

9. What are the major steps of nucleotide excision repair?

10. Why does a linear DNA get shorter with each cell division? How do telomeres help prevent
this shortening?