17.

a)

If the plasmid was digested with EcoRI, it would produce two fragments, with the sizes 1236 bp and 6660 bp. The first cut is at 1236 bp, and the last cut is (7896-1236) 6660 bp. If the plasmid was digested with BamHI, it would produce two fragments. The cuts of the fragments would occur at 3569 bp and 4968 bp, therefore the fragment sizes would be 1399 bp (4968 3569), and 6497 bp (7896 1399). If the plasmid was digested with HindIII, it would produce three fragments. The cuts of the fragments would occur at 6024 bp, 7095 bp, and 7524 bp, therefore the fragment sizes would be 1071 bp (7095 6024), the next fragment size would be 429 bp, and the last fragment is 6396 bp [7896 (429 +1071)]. If the plasmid was digested with EcoRI and HindIII, it would produce five fragments. The cuts of the fragments would occur at 1236 bp, 6024 bp, 7095 bp, 7524 bp, and 0/7896 bp, therefore the fragments sizes would be 1236 bp (1236 0), 4788 bp (6024 -1236), 1071 bp (7095 6024), 429 bp (7524 7095), and 372 bp ( 7896 7524). If the plasmid was digested with all three enzymes, it would produce several fragments. The cuts of the fragments would occur at 1236 bp, 3569 bp, 4968 bp, 6024 bp, 7095 bp, 7524 bp and 0/7896 bp, therefore the sizes would be 1236 bp (1236 - 0), 2333 bp (3569 1236), 1399 bp (4968 3569), 1056 bp (6024 4968), 1071 bp (7095 6024), 429 bp (7524 7095) and 372 bp (7896 7524). b) Cutting with BamHI would disable the antibiotic resistance, as it has its recognition site located in the middle of the tetracycline resistance gene. BamHI would split this gene into two fragments