Question

Expression of a cloned eukaryotic gene in a bacterial cell involves many challenges. The use of mRNA and reverse transcriptase is part of a strategy to solve the problem of what？

Answer 1

Post transcriptional processing, I believe. It's been a while since I've done that, so you might want to double check it. :)

Answer 2

confusionist is right. Genes in eukaryotes are composed of exons (coding sequences) and introns (non-coding/intervening sequences) . In order to produce a functional mRNA and thus a funtional protein introns in the mRNA have to be removed by a process called splicing which requires splicing machinery. Thus after splicing the mRNA contains only exons and only such mRNAs can be translated to a protein. In prokaryotes the genes contain only exons and no introns, therfore the mRNA produced require no splicing as a result splicing machinery is absent in them. Now if you put a eukaryotic gene in a prokaryote , the transcribed mRNA would contain both exons and introns. Since splicing machinery is absent in them introns won't get removed and an mRNA containing introns cannot be translated into a protein.

now when you put an mRNA ( which has only exons) and reverse transcriptase (RT) into a prokaryote , the RT reverse transcribes the mRNA into a DNA . This DNA represents the eukaryotic gene , but a gene without exons . The DNA now integrates into the prokaryotic genome and becomes a permanent part of it which faithfully tranferred to future generations on prokaryotic cell division. So when this gene is transcribed the mRNA produced will have only exons and thus can be translated into a protein by the prokaryotic translational machinery with ease.

Answer 3

this might help u .... :)
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091224132046AACjM5U