Question

A virus infects a cell and randomly inserts many short segments of DNA containing a stop codon throughout the organism's chromosomes. This will probably cause _____.

Answer 1

The question is incomplete as it does not have the options which are:

1. manufactured proteins to be short and defective
2. the DNA to break up into thousands of short segments
3. incorrect pairing between mRNA codons and amino acids
4. no bad effects, as long as the stop codons are not also inserted into tRNA
5. all of the above

Answer:

manufactured proteins to be short and defective

Explanation:

The virus particle replicates in the host machinery by using its DNA replication machinery and then transcription and translation machinery.

If by chance, the virus particle inserts stop codon along with the segments of DNA therefore the stop codon will show its effect during the translation process when the DNA sequence is translated into the proteins.

When the stop codon will be read during the translation then the protein synthesis will stop at that time and short or defective proteins will be produced.

Thus, the selected option is correct.