Question

A new restriction enzyme known as Hype I recognizes the sequence GGATCC/CCTAGG. Due to random chance, how often and what size fragments would you expect this enzyme to cut the human genome, which contains approximately 3 billion base pairs?

Answer 1

# total bases = 4 = ATGC

# bases present in restriction site recognised by Hype1 = 6

Probability of occurence of one base = 1/4

Probability of occurence of a specific sequence containing 6 bases = (1/4)^6 = 1/4096

So, we can say that restriction site for Hype1 will occur once every 4096 bases in the genome.

We can also say that it will cut DNA after every 4096 bases.

We can also say that length of one fragment generated after cutting the DNA with this enzyme is 4096 base pairs.

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