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Introduction:






Ever since the discovery of genes, it had been thought by many scientists that there must be a way to regulate them.  Response to environmental conditions by the simplest and most complex of organisms implies some regulation, and as biology developed to understand the nature of genes, it was evident that at least some regulation would have to take place at the level of the gene.  The search for a regulatory mechanism was intensified even more when the nature of DNA was discovered in 1953 by Watson and Crick, and less than a decade thereafter, Jacob and Monod would make their groundbreaking discovery of operons.  Within the following pages, we hope to clarify the general function of an operon, which is involved in prokaryotic gene control.  Further, we hope to elucidate some specific characteristics of operons by comparing the Lactose operon and the Arabinose operon for their similarities and differences. 








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