Which one of the following are not hallmarks used to identify genes in an unknown prokaryotic sequence? a. termination sequences. b. operator sequences. c. promoters 5' and 3'. d. intron splice sites.

d. intron splice sites

Explanation:

Splice sites are a characteristic of eukaryotic genomes. Eukaryotes have exons i. e. coding regions and introns i. e. non-coding or regulatory regions. During post-transcriptional modification, introns from the transcribed pre-mRNA are removed by a process known as splicing. With the introns removed, the exons are combined to produce a mature translatable mRNA. Prokaryotic genomes are only composed of exons. They do not possess introns. Prokaryotic genes are transcribed and translated simultaneously without the need of post transcriptional modifications.