Fergus - Lecture 1 - part 1 Flashcards
What is bioinformatics?
The application of information technology and computer science to the field of biology
What is computational biology?
(4)
Finds the genes in the DNA sequences of various organisms
Develops methods to predict the structure and or function of newly discovered proteins
Aligning similar proteins and generating phylogenetic trees
Clustering protein sequences into families of related sequences
Who is responsible for discovering the DNA structure?
Watson and Crick
What is CML?
Chronic myeloid leukemia
Presence of the philadelphia chromosome -> reciprocal translocation involving chromosomes 9 and 22
What 8 parts make up a eukaryotic gene?
Exons
Introns
Promoter
Enhancer
TATAA region
GAAT region
GC region
OCT region
What does an enhancer do?
It modulates the rate of transcription
What does the TATA box do?
(2)
This is the binding site of the TATA-binding protein
Transcription is initiated at the TATA box
What does the CAAT box do?
Signals the binding site for the RNA transcription factor
NF1 = box binding protein
What does the GC region
Similar function to enhancers an example of GC box-binding protein = SP1
What is the Oct region
Transcription factor
Octamer binding protein
What does UTR stand for?
Untranslated region
How many chromosomes do we have?
46
How many genes do we have?
20,000
How many single nucleotide polymorphisms do we have?
50,000
How many polymorphic markers do humans have?
5,800
What is a polymorphic marker?
Markers that show some degree of variability in a population
e.g. height
What were the aims of the human genome project?
Sequence the entire human genome by September 30th 2005
Generate a 100kb resolution physical map
Identify, map and sequence all genes
How many eukaryotic genomes have been completed?
303
How many microbial genomes have been completed?
3137 -> easier to identify bacteria via gene sequence then preliminary identification
List the different types of sequences that make up the human genome
(9)
LINES
SINES
Retrovirus like elements
DNA transposon fossils
Simple sequence repeats
Segmental duplications
Introns
Exons
Heterochromatin
What % of human genome is heterochromatin?
8%
What % of human genome is exons?
1.5%
What % of human genome is introns ?
About 25%
What % of human genome is segmental duplications?
5%
What % of human genome is simple sequence repeats ?
3%
What % of human genome is DNA transposon fossils?
3%