Chapter 4-Nucleic Acids And Protein Methods Flashcards
Function of the Y2H system
To test the interaction between 2 proteins through the downstream activation of a reporter gene
Advantages of Y2H system
- Relatively fast and easy method to screen for protein-protein interactions
- Requires little hands-on time and technical skill
- Can be scaled up by screening yeast libraries of tagged prey proteins against a single bait, allowing thousands of potential interactions to be screened rapidly
Limitations of Y2H system
- High rates of false positives and false negatives
- Tagged proteins may not fold correctly and may not bind to their targets
- Interaction must occur in the nucleus for the reporter gene to be activated
Function of Y1H system
Tests for protein-DNA interaction
In the Y1H system, which transcriptional domain is the protein bound to?
Activating domain
Advantages of Y1H system
- Able to detect protein-DNA interactions that are not actually activating transcription e.g. DNA repair proteins and repressor proteins
- Compatible with existing libraries
- Can detect isoform specific interactions, detection of highly specific interactions
Disadvantages of Y1H system
- No information on the functional consequences of DNA-protein interaction
- Rates of false-positive results are high
- Improper protein folding may occur resulting in loss of interactions
Function of EMSA
Tests for DNA-protein interaction (need to know DNA sequence)
Advantages of EMSA
- Highly sensitive, assay can be performed with small protein and nucleic acid concentrations and small sample volumes
- Assay works well with both highly purified and crude cell extracts
- A wide range of nucleic acid sizes are compatible with the assay
Function of DNA footprinting
- to study DNA-protein interactions (need to know general protein-binding region)
Function of ChIP
To study protein-DNA interactions (when you don’t know which part of the DNA the protein of interest binds to)
3 types of protein purification chromatography
Affinity, ion-exchange, gel-filtration
How does affinity chromatography work?
- separation method based on specific binding interaction between an immobilised ligand and its binding partner on the protein
Advantages of affinity chromatography
- Cheap
- High specificity
- High degree of purity of protein
How does ion-exchange chromatography work?
- separates proteins based on total charge
How does gel filtration chromatography work?
- separates proteins based on size through filtration through a gel
What is the principle behind isolation of nucleic acids using spin columns?
- nucleic acids bind to silica under certain conditions but not others
Conditions for the use of mini prep kits
- small scale preparations of plasmids with yields of 2-5ug of DNA/RNA
Conditions for use of maxi prep kits
- large scale preparation of plasmids with yields of 500ug-2mg DNA/RNA
- more time consuming and expensive
How to obtain plasmids and not genomic DNA?
- perform alkaline lysis: shorter stretches of DNA like plasmids renature following denaturation much faster than longer stretches of DNA like gDNA
What are the components in a PCR mix?
- buffer
- MgCl2
- forward and reverse primers
- template DNA
- dNTPs
- taq polymerase