Introduction to Genomics Flashcards
What is a genome?
The entire genetic material of an organism.
What is the difference between genomics and genetics?
Genomics is the study of the entire DNA sequence of an organism (including the complete set of genes it has).
Genetics is the study of inheritance - how traits are passed down generations and the role of genes in that process.
What is the transcriptome and proteome?
The transcriptome is the total RNA content that has been transcribed from DNA.
The proteome is the total protein content that has been translated from RNA.
What is an ‘ome’? What are 5 biological objects and their ‘ome’?
An ‘ome’ is ‘the totality of’.
DNA - Genome RNA - Transcriptome Protein - Proteome Epigenetic signals - Epigenome Microorganisms - Metagenome
What is an epigenetic signal and a microorganism?
Epigenetic signal - markers (associated with specific locations in the genome) in DNA/ histones that regulate gene expression.
Microorganism - a very small organism.
What are transcriptomics?
The study of all RNA transcripts that are produced either by a single cell, a tissue or an organism.
How is the proteome an additional level of variation?
Different carbohydrates in different patterns can be added to proteins post-translation.
What is the difference between an intron and exon?
A DNA sequence in a gene consists of introns and exons. Exons can code for proteins whilst introns cannot. When DNA is transcribed to mRNA, the introns are removed.
How has DNA sequencing technologically advanced over the years? Give answer in figures.
From 500 base pairs to 37 million base pairs i.e. a 74,000 fold change.
What is an SNP and GWAS?
SNP - A single nucleotide polymorphism i.e. 1 nucleotide at a specific position in the genome has variation and the same variation shows in a population of organisms.
Genome wide-association study - a study of a set of variants (version of something that differs to the original) from different individuals to see if the variants are associated with a trait. The amount of variants is ‘genome wide’.
For the mitochondrial genome and epigenome/ metagenome, how many diseases can occur in them that are associated with DNA variants?
The mitochondrial genome has many diseases associated with variants whilst the epigenome and metagenome only have some.
How can the epigenome vary?
The epigenome can have changes occur in the marks in DNA/ histones.
How is the metagenome taken?
The genomes of all the organisms from a specific location are taken.
