Question

Not long ago, it was believed that a count of the number of protein-coding genes would provide a count of the number of proteins produced in any given eukaryotic species. This is incorrect, largely due to the discovery of widespread _____.a) chromatin condensation controlb) transcriptional controlc) alternative splicingd) translational control

Answer 1

c) Alternative splicing

Step-by-step explanation:

Eukaryotic genes have protein-coding sequences called exons and non-protein coding sequences called introns. Introns are removed from the primary transcript after transcription. Some sequences may serve as both introns and exons. These sequences may be removed as introns or may be retained as exons producing mRNA with different combinations of exons from the single primary transcript. The process of called alternative splicing and allows the formation of more than one mRNAs from a single gene.

Therefore, alternative splicing allows one protein-coding sequence to code for more than one type of related proteins. It does not allow to correlate the number of protein-coding genes with the total number of proteins produced by a species.