Jordans Notes 5

Question 1

What happens to gel electrophoresis results if DNA is lower quality, sheared, or degraded?

Answer 1

Smearing

Question 2

Primers that target a single species

Answer 2

Specific primers
useful for:
- detection/absence of a species in eDNA
- species confirmation

Question 3

What kind of primer should be used when you know what species you want to detect?

Answer 3

Specific primers

Question 4

What is the ultimate purpose of gel electrophoresis?

Answer 4

lets us check if we have DNA of the expected size following PCR

Question 5

If micro-satellite genotyping doesn’t look at the exact sequence, what does it actually look at?

Answer 5

Fragment length of short tandem repeats
- different alleles have different lengths

Question 6

How common are SNPs?

Answer 6

millions in the genome -> roughly one per 1000 nucleotides

Question 7

Why don’t we just sequence whole genomes?

Answer 7

costs a lot, can’t assemble it all, too much data

Question 8

Do you need a mortar and pestle for animal tissue maceration?

Answer 8

Only for species with hard exoskeletons
- arthropods
- molluscs

Question 9

What does creating a hydrophobic environment achieve during DNA extraction?

Answer 9

Makes the silica membrane (or beads) the most suitable binding partner for DNA

Question 10

What attaches between DNA and the silica membrane?

Answer 10

A salt bridge