Question

1. human growth hormone (hgh) is necessary for growth during human adolescence. pituitary dwarfism is a condition that results from the inability of a person to produce hgh. luckily, the human gene for hgh can be inserted into e. coli bacteria, which are able to make our hgh. the resulting hgh is used by people who are unable to make their own. what property about hereditary information makes this possible?

Explanation:

The key property is the universality of the genetic code (and DNA structure). All living organisms (including humans and bacteria like E. coli) use the same genetic code (the correspondence between DNA/RNA codons and amino acids) and have similar DNA structure (double - stranded, composed of the same nucleotides: adenine, thymine/uracil, guanine, cytosine). This means that when the human HGH gene (a segment of DNA with specific nucleotide sequences) is inserted into E. coli, the bacterial cellular machinery can "read" the human gene's nucleotide sequence, transcribe it into mRNA, and then translate that mRNA into the HGH protein using the universal genetic code. In other words, the hereditary information (in the form of DNA) has a universal language of nucleotides and a universal way of being translated into proteins across different species, allowing the transfer of a human gene to a bacterium and the bacterium to produce the human protein.

Answer:

The universality of the genetic code (and the fundamental similarity of DNA structure and the mechanisms of gene expression - transcription and translation - across different species) makes this possible. All organisms use the same genetic code (the relationship between DNA/RNA codons and the amino acids they encode) and have similar molecular machinery for transcribing DNA to mRNA and translating mRNA to proteins. So, when the human HGH gene is inserted into E. coli, the bacterium can transcribe and translate the human gene to produce the HGH protein, as the genetic instructions (in terms of how nucleotide sequences are interpreted to build proteins) are universal across species.