Diversity and Variation Question 3

The figure above shows several steps in the process of bacteriophage transduction in bacteria. Which of the following explains how genetic variation in a population of bacteria results from this process?

Bacterial proteins transferred from the donor bacterium by the phage to the recipient bacterium recombine with genes on the recipient’s chromosome.

The recipient bacterium incorporates the transduced genetic material coding for phage proteins into its chromosome and synthesizes the corresponding proteins.

The phage infection of the recipient bacterium and the introduction of DNA carried by the phage cause increased random point mutations of the bacterial chromosome.

DNA of the recipient bacterial chromosome undergoes recombination with DNA introduced by the phage from the donor bacterium, leading to a change in the recipient’s genotype.