Exam 16: Microbial Evolution and Systematics

It is believed that phototrophy arose approximately 3.3 billion years ago, and only in

Oxygen was a driving factor in the formation of eukaryotic cells.

What was a major waste product of photosynthesis before the cyanobacterial lineage developed on Earth?

At present there are four phyla in the domain Archaea.

The establishment of DNA as the genome of the cell may have resulted from the need to store genetic information in a more stable form than RNA.

Because DNA:DNA hybridization reveals subtle differences in genes, it is useful for differentiating

When exposed to UV light, oxygen gas produces ozone gas.

Which of the following is NOT an assumption used in the molecular clock approach?

The eukaryotic functional equivalent of the prokaryotic 16S rRNA is the

Which chemotaxonomic tool would scientists use if they wanted to determine if an outbreak of food poisoning was caused by a particular strain of a pathogen?

The early energy reactions yielded hydrogen, which is a powerful ________and could have been used to form a(n)________ .

Which is NOT a characteristic of a "primitive" state of microbial evolution?

The organization of bacteria into progressively more inclusive groups based on either phenotype similarity or evolutionary relationship is known as

Horizontal gene transfer is the transfer of genetic material

Traits currently considered most important for grouping strains together as a species include________ and ________.

Lateral gene transfer is one plausible explanation as to why organisms in Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya still share so many genes among such distinct domains.

In taxonomy, family is a more general term than order.

The earliest nucleic acid was probably a simple DNA molecule.

One phenotypic trait used for species identification and description is the analysis of the types and proportions of the fatty acids present in the cytoplasmic and outer membranes. The methodology employed is often nicknamed FAME.

The primary domains were founded based on comparative ribosomal RNA gene sequencing.