Seminar paper 4: minisatellites

Question 1

What is high stringency?

Answer 1

Conditions that only sequences that are perfectly complementary will bind

Question 2

How do you make high stringency conditions?

Answer 2

Lower salt concentrations and high temperature

Question 3

What is low stringency?

Answer 3

Conditions that allow imperfect complementary. Allows finding similar sequences to your target, or if you didn’t know what your target sequence was

Question 4

How do you make low stringency conditions?

Answer 4

High salt concentrations and low temperature

Question 5

Why did the authors use HinfI or HaeIII instead of EcoR1 to isolate the myoglobin minisatellite?

Answer 5

These have shorter recognition sites, so they’re going to cut in more places due to chance

Question 6

How do you tell if two minisatellite bands are allelic?

Answer 6

Only one or the other will be passed down, but never both

Question 7

How do you tell if two minisatellite bands are non-allelic?

Answer 7

Both or neither band can be passed down

Question 8

What are two ways that new minisatellite alleles are generated?

Answer 8

Strand slippage during replication and unequal crossing over