You isolate a new drug that seems to kill bacteria. Tounderstand the mechanism of the bacterial death, you do twoexperiments where you grow the bacteria in the presence of eitherradiolabeled methionine or radiolabeled uracil and then resolve theproteins or RNA as appropriate. Although the signal for theradiolabeled RNA stays constant in both treated and untreatedsamples, the amount of radiolabeled proteins is reduced in thetreated sample.
A. Hypothesize how the drug is killing thebacteria.
B. After doing further experiments, you findthat the drug has a very high affinity for the RNA sequence5’-ACCUCC. Would you use this drug to treat human patients? Explainyour answer.
