the three plasmids used in this experiment are multicopy
plasmids. consider just pUC18 (~2.7 kb) and psPAX (~10.7 kb). you
isolate these plasmids from separate e. coli cell cultures and run
the plasmids in an agarose gel. we know from theory that the
metabolic burden will reduce the number of larger psPAX2 molecules
versus the number of pUC18 molecules in a proportional ratio that
is related to the fourfold difference in their plasmid sizes. Say
you wanted to measure the total number of gel-red molecules bound
to the pUC18 and psPAX2 plasmid bands in the agarose gel. Can you
give an answer to this question?

clue: Answer is based on plasmid sizes versus amount of each
plasmid in the gel bands.