What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9700 Biology papers and filtered to genetic technology. You answer, you find out immediately whether you were right, and you get the reasoning for the correct option and for each distractor. Wrong answers go to a mistakes locker so you can come back to exactly those.
Practice is free. You need an account only so your progress and your mistakes are still there next time.
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What examiners see students get wrong here
These are the errors that cost marks on genetic technology, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Defining recombinant DNA as any modified DNA, rather than DNA combining sequences from two different organisms.
- Saying restriction enzymes join DNA and ligase cuts it. Endonucleases cut; ligase joins.
- Cutting the plasmid and the gene with different restriction enzymes and still expecting the sticky ends to match.
- Forgetting the promoter, so the answer transfers a gene the host will never transcribe.
- Using genomic DNA rather than cDNA when the host is a bacterium, and so ignoring introns.
- Saying reverse transcriptase makes RNA from DNA. It makes DNA from RNA.
- Saying PCR needs Taq polymerase because it works fast. It is needed because it is not denatured at 95 °C.
- Leaving primers out of a PCR answer, or forgetting that the denaturation step breaks hydrogen bonds only.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Genetic technology revision notes.