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Question 01

The role of development in evolution is:

a) to translate material in the phenotype into information in the genotype.

b) to reduce the cohort of newborn to those individuals that have survived to reproduce.

c) to map the information in the genotype into the material of the phenotype.

d) to transform the genotypes of parents into the genotypes of offspring.

Question 02

What are some general evolutionary problems plausibly solved by developmental hypotheses?

a) Genetic drift - random change in gene frequencies.

b) Altruism - self-sacrifice for relatives.

c) Parallelisms - similar evolution in clades sharing a common ancestor.

d) Adaptation - the design of organisms for reproductive success.

Question 03

What are the basic structural units manipulated by developmental mechanisms?

a) Brains

b) Opinions

c) Cells

d) Molecules

Question 04

Some genes control the expression of others by producing proteins that bind to control regions on the target genes. We call these proteins:

a) hormones.

b) neuropeptides.

c) transcription factors.

d) second messengers.

Question 05

The homeobox is:

a) a cell compartment containing developmental mutations.

b) the entire sequence of a developmental control gene.

c) an entire cell acting as a control center for development.

d) a highly conserved DNA sequence representing that small but important part of some genes that make transcription factors. It codes for the amino acids forming the part of the protein that recognizes and binds to the DNA molecule by fitting into its structure.

Question 06

How are the initial stages of development controlled?

a) By genes detecting which cells they sit next to.

b) By genes reacting to a concentration gradient that tells them where they sit with respect to the major parts of the organism.

c) By innate instructions invariantly expressed regardless of cell position.

d) By orienting to the gravitational field.

Question 07

How can the single cell type of the zygote be changed to produce the hundreds of cell types of the adult?

a) By throwing away different genes in different cell lineages.

b) By differentially duplicating genes specific to each cell type.

c) By using information from outside the cell to determine what type each cell shall become.

d) By retaining all the genetic information in every cell but only expressing a very specific subset of that information, a different subset in each cell type.

Question 08

How did the major differences in animal body plans originate?

a) They still evolve rapidly in response to natural selection.

b) They were present at the origin of life.

c) They are ancient and are associated with major events in the evolution of development.

d) They originated at the same time as major differences among plant groups.

Question 09

The reason for the colinearity of the HOX genes is:

a) colinearity is essential for their control functions.

b) it is simply a result of gene duplication.

c) there was no other option.

d) it remains a mystery.

Question 10

Genes that share sequence similarity because they descended from a common ancestor are called what?

a) Orthologous genes

b) Developmental control genes

c) Paralogous genes

d) Ancestral genes

Question 11

Through what comparison of developmental systems was the ancient origin and striking conservation of developmental control genes established?

a) Jellyfish and chicken

b) Human and oyster

c) Dinosaur and millipede

d) Fly and mouse

Question 12

What is one plausible hypothesis for the evolutionary origin of new structures - innovations?

a) They are built up in small incremental steps from existing structures.

b) They are based on the duplication of developmental control genes that elicit the production of entire morphological modules.

c) They can only occur when the entire genome is duplicated to make a tetraploid.

d) The production of innovations is such a deep mystery that their existence calls into question the fact of evolution.

Question 13

What is the best evidence that arthropods are upside-down vertebrates and that vertebrates are upside-down arthropods?

a) The digestive tract is ventral to the nerve cord in vertebrates and dorsal to it in arthropods.

b) When fly embryos are raised without gravity in the Space Station they turn into mouse embryos.

c) Developmental control genes expressed dorsally in vertebrates are expressed ventrally in arthropods; those expressed ventrally in vertebrates are expressed dorsally in arthropods.

d) Vertebrates start development as arthropods, then flip over.

Question 14

In the ABC model of flower development, A, B, and C refer to what?

a) The stages of development at which one gene is expressed.

b) Three different developmental control genes.

c) Three groups of genes that all belong to the MADS gene family.

d) Three HOX genes.

Question 15

The fact that a gene that controls eye development in mice can be inserted into a fly and expressed in odd places where it elicits the development of partial fly eyes demonstrates that:

a) it only takes one gene to build an eye.

b) this gene controlled the development of complete eyes when it originated hundreds of millions of years ago.

c) the control of eye development has been conserved at least since the common ancestor of mice and flies.

d) flies and mice have basically the same types of eyes.

Question 16

The number of transcription factors that interact to determine the expression of a gene is:

a) always only one: one TF for each gene expressed.

b) always many.

c) always three or fewer.

d) from one to about 20, usually 10-20.

Question 17

The number of genes with which one transcription factor can bind is:

a) from one to several hundred.

b) always only one.

c) usually less than five.

d) always more than one hundred.

Question 18

Given the number of transcription factors that interact to determine the expression of a gene is between 10 and 20, and the number of genes with which one transcription factor can bind ranges from one to several hundred, we can assume that:

a) each gene has only one function.

b) genes can play different roles at different stages of development and in different tissues.

c) the phenotype is a direct linear expression of the genotype.

d) gene interactions are rare and unimportant.

Question 19

The DNA sequences in the boxes characteristic of transcription factors are highly conserved. Which of the following is not a reason for this?

a) A part of the protein coded by the conserved sequence binds to the DNA in the control region of the target gene.

b) A part of the protein coded by the conserved sequence must interact precisely with the nuclear pore through which it must travel to deliver its message.

c) They have extremely low mutation rates.

d) A part of the protein coded by the conserved sequence must interact precisely with portions of the proteins of other transcription factors involved in combinatorial control.

Question 20

The experiments done on the development of digits in the feet of frogs and salamanders demonstrate:

a) that evolution was parallel because the last digit to develop was the first to be lost in both clades.

b) that evolution was parallel because when a digit was lost in evolution, it was the same one in both clades.

c) that evolution of digit development was constrained because it remained the same in both clades.

d) that all tetrapods always have five digits.

Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 06.

Chapter 06

Instructions