Given the following genomic structure of a gene, describe how 40 kD and 70 kD proteins could be produced. [The average molecular weight of an amino acid is 110 Daltons.]

Any input on how to go about solving this would be appreciated.

Hey! So to answer this question, I suggest converting the 40kD and 70kD into a number of amino acids, then to the number of nucleotides. To do this, you would take the number (in my example i will use 20kD) and do this:

20kD(1000 daltons/1 kilodalton)(1 amino acid/110 daltons)(3 nucleotides/1 amino acid) = (20*1000*3)/(*110) = 60000/110 = 545.4545 nucleotides = 545 nucleotides

Since exons are cliped from the gene, and introns are put together to make a protein, you would simply find the intron sequences that add up to the right amount of nucleotides found above. So you would take the nucleotide number found on the right of the intron, then subtract the nucleotide number on the left of the intron from that to get the nucleotide length of the intron. From there you just look at what introns have the right amount of nucleotides. So for my example, i would look for a couple of introns that add to 545 nucleotides in length. You would simply just state that those introns would be put together for the synthesis of the protein.

Hope that helped.