The blood of a normal healthy adult rat contains 5 million red blood cells (rbcs) per microliter of blood. each deciliter of blood contains 15 grams of hemoglobin. each rbc contains 250 million molecules of hemoglobin (a fairly close approximation for a healthy adult retired breeder female rat). suppose you have 9.96 ml of blood drawn from a healthy female retired breeder rat, then how many rbcs are in this blood sample?

step 1: initiation

initiation is the beginning of transcription. it occurs when the enzyme rna polymerase binds to a region of a gene called the promoter. this signals the dna to unwind so the enzyme can ‘‘read’’ the bases in one of the dna strands. the enzyme is now ready to make a strand of mrna with a complementary sequence of bases.

step 2: elongation

elongation is the addition of nucleotides to the mrna strand. rna polymerase reads the unwound dna strand and builds the mrna molecule, using complementary base pairs. there is a brief time during this process when the newly formed rna is bound to the unwound dna. during this process, an adenine (a) in the dna binds to an uracil (u) in the rna.

step 3: termination

termination is the ending of transcription, and occurs when rna polymerase crosses a stop (termination) sequence in the gene. the mrna strand is complete, and it detaches from dna.