Science Homework Help

1. Nucleotide substitutions might lead to changes in the sequence of amino acids in a protein, which can be seen by comparing homologous positions in a sequence alignment. How would deletions or insertions appear in a sequence alignment?

2. Sometimes gene duplications result in the formation of a pseudogene, a sequence of nucleotides that is very similar to a gene but isn’t expressed. This can occur in a variety of ways, for example if the gene is duplicated but a regulatory region or the promoter region for that gene is not duplicated. Which would evolve (accumulate nucleotide substitutions) more rapidly, a psuedogene or a duplicated gene that was expressed? Explain.