An Honours student is given a new reverse transcriptase enzy

An Honours student is given a new reverse transcriptase enzyme to assay. She has a polyribocytidylate (polyC) RNA template to use in her experiments.

Solution

DNA is being made in both the experiments but as we know the moslde of DNA replication is semiconservative. The parental strand which was not labelled on the first experiment will not be able to dected via radioactivity.

Moreover in the second experiment, the alpha P is labelled . It is associated with the CH2OH group of the ribose sugar in the dGTP molecule. Due to this association of phosphate group just adjacent to sugar is showing radioactivity in the replicated DNA molecule. While the gamma PHOSPHORUS is the hird phosphate group of the sugar.so it is not showing labelled DNA in the first experiment.