Studying sea urchins, biologist Paul Gross found that an unfertilized egg contains substances that func- tion as morphogenetic determinants. They are located in the cytoplasm of the egg cell; i.e., in that part of the cells protoplasm that lies outside of the nucleus. In the unfertilized egg, the substances are inactive and are not distributed homogeneously. When the egg is fertilized, the substances become active and, presumably, govern the behavior of the genes they interact with. Since the substances are unevenly distributed in the egg, when the fertilized egg divides, the resulting cells are different from the start and so can be qualitatively different in their own gene activity. The substances that Gross studied are maternal messenger RNAs --products of certain of the maternal genes. He and other biologists studying a wide variety of organisms have found that these particular RNAs direct, in large part, the synthesis of histones, a class of proteins that bind to DNA. Once synthesized, the histones move into the cell nucleus, where section of DNA wrap around them to form a structure that resem- bles beads, or knots, on a string. The beads are DNA segments wrapped around the histones; the string is the intervening DNA. And it is the structure of these beaded DNA strings that guides the fate of the cells in which they are located.
1. The passage is most probably directed at which kind of audience?
State legislators deciding about funding levels for a state-funded biological laboratory
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