State Exams GK Questions 2026

The Genome India Project was launched in January 2020 by the Department of Biotechnology, which works under the Ministry of Science and Technology, and brings together about twenty academic institutions to sequence Indian genomes and build a reference set that reflects the country's genetic diversity.

The Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics was established in 1995 as an autonomous institution of the Department of Biotechnology and works at Hyderabad on DNA fingerprinting services, diagnostics of genetic disorders and research in genomics.

In the Watson and Crick model the two strands are held together by hydrogen bonds between complementary bases: adenine pairs with thymine through two hydrogen bonds and guanine pairs with cytosine through three.

The polymerase chain reaction, invented by Kary Mullis in 1983, repeats three steps: the DNA is denatured near ninety-five degrees Celsius, short primers anneal at a lower temperature, and the strand is extended at about seventy-two degrees.

The Human Genome Project was launched in 1990 as an international public effort coordinated in the United States by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, with laboratories in several countries taking part.

Each nucleotide of DNA carries a phosphate group, and the phosphate backbone gives the whole molecule a net negative charge at the pH used in the laboratory.

Cas9 is an enzyme that breaks the sugar-phosphate backbone of both DNA strands at the point where its guide RNA has bound, provided a short adjacent signal called the PAM is present.

The two scientists showed that the bacterial CRISPR-Cas9 system could be directed by a designed guide RNA to cut any chosen sequence of DNA, which turned a microbial defence mechanism into a general tool for editing genomes, and they shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020.

Working at the University of Leicester in 1984, Alec Jeffreys found that certain short sequences, the minisatellites or variable number tandem repeats, repeat a different number of times in different people, and that a pattern made from them identifies an individual.

Mount Abu, in Sirohi district, is the only hill station of Rajasthan.

The Aravalli trends from south-west to north-east, which is roughly the direction in which the Arabian Sea branch of the monsoon travels.

The Bhorat plateau is the high, flat tract of the southern Aravalli lying between Gogunda in Udaipur district and Kumbhalgarh in Rajsamand, with an average height above twelve hundred metres.

A barchan is a crescent-shaped dune with a gentle windward slope and a steep slip face, its two horns pointing downwind, and it migrates as sand is carried over the crest.

The canal, originally called the Rajasthan Canal and renamed after Indira Gandhi, begins at the Harike barrage in Punjab, built just below the point where the Beas joins the Sutlej, and carries water about 649 kilometres through Sri Ganganagar, Hanumangarh, Bikaner and Jaisalmer.

The Desert National Park covers about 3,162 square kilometres in the Jaisalmer and Barmer districts and protects the sand dunes, salt flats and thorn scrub of the Thar along with the great Indian bustard, called godawan locally, which is the state bird of Rajasthan.

Sambhar lake spreads across the Jaipur and Nagaur districts of Rajasthan and is the largest inland salt-water lake in India, a major source of common salt and a wetland where flamingos gather in winter.

The Luni rises in the Naga hills near Ajmer in the Aravalli, flows south-west through Pali, Jodhpur, Barmer and Jalore and loses itself in the marshes of the Rann of Kachchh in Gujarat.

The Aravalli was folded in Precambrian times, long before the Himalaya existed, and hundreds of millions of years of erosion have worn it down to a chain of residual hills whose rocks carry zinc, lead, copper and marble.

Guru Shikhar stands on Mount Abu in Sirohi district and, at 1,722 metres, is the highest point of the Aravalli Range and of Rajasthan.

Lakshadweep has no High Court of its own and falls under the jurisdiction of the Kerala High Court at Kochi, which is the nearest mainland coast and the state whose language, Malayalam, the islanders speak.