You Have Found a Strain of Escherichia Coli That Has

Multiple Choice

You have found a strain of Escherichia coli that has an unusually short doubling time of only 15 minutes, despite the fact that its complete DNA replication should take almost 35 minutes. You also find that there is only one replication origin on its chromosome from which two forks originate, just like the normal process described for E. coli. However, you discover that the origin of replication in this strain has a significantly shorter "refractory period," resulting in the reactivation of the origin before the previous round of replication is over. Based on this model, if you examine the chromosomes of this strain (under conditions of fast growth) , how many replication forks would you expect to observe per chromosome on average?

A) Two, just like the wild-type strain
B) Four
C) Six
D) Eight
E) Ten