L8 Measuring Gene Expression Flashcards
What is the central dogma of molecular biology?
DNA is transcribed within the nucleus, a bundle of factor assemble at the start of a gene. Transcription is performed by RNA polymerase.
mRNA is spliced by a spliceosome to exclude introns and only contain exons. It moves to the cytosol where Ribosomes tranlate them into Protein
What is alternative splicing?
Depending on how an RNA molecule is spliced one gene can produce many similar RNA molecules and thus proteins.
What is a gene expression profile?
A chart that shows the relative expression levels of many genes. Can be used as a diagnostic and prognostic tool.
What is Poly A selection?
A way to collect mRNA from an RNAseq sample by designing sequences that bind to the poly A tail of mRNA and then collect the mRNA.
This means that we lose the long and small ncRNA from our sample as well, which we may be interested in.
What is ribo-depletion?
A method of excluding rRNA from our RNAseq sample. We design a probe intended to bind to the rRNA and then we can remove it. This is difficult to do in a specific way, but it is possible.
Useful since it allows us to keep long and small ncRNA if we are interested in it.
What is cDNA?
After RNA is collected for RNAseq we use a reverse transcriptase to convert the RNA to DNA, since we can’t sequence the RNA directly
