Topic 1 - Nucleic Acids Flashcards
Lectures 1-5
What are Megakaryocytes the parent cells of?
Blood Platelets
How many nucleaotides does the human genome consist of?
About 3x10^9
How many chromosomes in (most) human cells?
46
Which cells can copy their DNA without dividing?
Megakaryocytes, Hepatocytes etc.
What is the Barr body?
Women inactivate one of their XX chromosomes & push it to the edge of the nucleus
Why do Chimps have a greater chromosome number?
Human chromosome 2 is a fusion of chimp chromosomes 12 & 13
What is Synteny?
Where long DNA sequences are present in the same order across species
What is translocation?
Chromosomes breaking and reforming
What causes Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia?
Faulty translocation in the Philadelphia chromosome (22)
What are genes transcribed into?
- mRNA (to be translated to proteins)
- structural RNAs (rRNA or tRNA)
- regulatory RNAs (microRNAs or Xist)
What is Xist?
X Inactivation Specific Transcript, a regulatory RNA that switches off a copy of X in XX cells
What are introns and exons?
Introns - Non-coding, spliced out.
Exons - Coding, make it to the mature mRNA.
Why was the Puffer Fish genome sequenced?
Fugu is very economic in it’s DNA - few kilobases per gene
What is a ‘gene desert’?
Large intergenic regions in the genome, may be control elements for diseases such as Huntingtons.
What is Imprinting?
When one copy of a gene inherited from a parent is switched on but the other parents copy is switched off.
What is a retrovirus?
RNA viruses that insert a DNA copy of their genome into the genomic DNA of the cells that they infect.
What is a Pseudogene?
Stretches of DNA that have sequence in common with functional human genes but which are non-functional
How do pseudogenes arise?
Sometimes genes are duplicated and acquire mutations that make them inactive.
Reverse Transcription can also occur, copying an mRNA back to DNA, but these pseudogenes lack promoters so are unlikely to be transcribed.
What is a VNTR?
Variable Number Tandem Repeat - multiple copies of short sequences that can be amplified by PCR
How are VNTRs generated?
When DNA polymerases copy highly repeated sequences slippage can occur - they insert too many or too few copies of a repeat sequence
What is Huntingtons caused by?
Expansion of a long CAG repeat in the Huntington protein gene
How do we look for genes causing single gene disorders?
Exome sequencing.
What is a telomere?
A type of repeat sequence which protects the ends of chromosomes and is involved in regulating the number of divisions a cell can make
What are SNPs?
Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms. A polymorphism is a difference present in 1% or more of the population
What is a GWAS?
Genome Wide Association Study - works out the disease rink in many individuals with various conditions.
What does ANRIL appear to regulate/influence?
Risk of heart disease and diabetes
What is the evidence for DNA’s biological role?
-Griffith
-Avery
-Hershey and Chase
(experiments ranging from the 1920s to the 50s)
What was Griffiths experiment? (1928)
Used two strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae - one rough (non-virulent) and one smooth (virulent). Figured out that when heat killed smooth strain was combined with smooth strain it could somehow pass the virulence onto the non-deadly strain.
What was Avery’s experiment? (1944)
Showed that DNA was a transforming agent because out of purified DNA, RNA, protein, lipid and carbohydrate only DNA could induce virulence in non-virulent strain.
What was the Hershey & Chase experiment? (1952)
Confirmed the role of DNA as the genetic material by labeling the protein and DNA components of bacteriophages with different radioactive molecules.
What was the Chargraff experiment? (1952)
Base composition of DNA - found that % of adenine and thymine and guanine and cytosine were always very similar.
What did Watson and Crick do? (1953)
Figured out the 3D structure of the DNA molecule + suggested copying mechanism. Rosalind Franklin managed to get X-Ray diffraction image of DNA
What is the DNA structure?
- Antiparallel strands form double helix
- Sugar phosphate backbone
- Base pairs join complementary strands together by hydrogen bonding
What are the building blocks of DNA?
Nucleotides. Consist of base, sugar and phosphate. Sugar is deoxyribose.
What is the phosphate backbone?
- Backbone of DNA is a sugar phosphate polymer
- Adjacent deoxyribose sugars are linked by phosphodiester bonds
- 5’ and 3’ ends give the strands directionality
What is the larger scale packaging of DNA?
- DNA is tightly coiled around histone proteins, forming chromatin
- Active genes more loosely coiled than silent ones
What is meant by semiconservative DNA replication?
Each new double stranded DNA molecule contains an original template strand and a newly synthesised complementary strand.
What is the replication fork?
The origin of replication, site which utilises a dynamic structure.
What happens at the replication fork?
- helicase unwinds the double stranded DNA to allow replication to occur
- single strand binding proteins stabilise the denatured DNA
- DNA primase synthesisses a short RNA primer to allow replication to commence
- DNA polymerase III carries out the elongation of the new strand of DNA which forms by complementary base pairing to the template strand
Which direction does DNA synthesis occur in?
5’ to 3’ end, requiring a free 3’-OH initially provided by the RNA primer
How is the lagging strand of DNA synthesised from?
As DNA can only be synthesised 5’ to 3’ end, short strands must be synthesised on the lagging strand, each with it’s own RNA primer.
DNA polymerase I then replaces the RNA primers with DNA and DNA ligase seals the gaps between fragments.
How are errors in DNA replication corrected?
DNA polymerase has a 3’ to 5’ editing function to remove incorrectly inserted bases. (reducing error to 1x10^7)
A further check for mismatched bases is made by other enzymes (reducing error to 1x10^9)
How do mutations arise?
- Spontaneously due to error in replication
- Induced by DNA damage (eg by radiation or mutagens)
What is Ethyl Methane Sulphonate (EMS)?
A mutagen which alkylates DNA, causing a GC–>AT mutation.
What are the types of gene mutation?
- Base substitution
- Base insertion
- Base deletion
- Base rearrangement
What are the consequences of mutation?
Germ cell - can be inherited
Somatic cell - may lead to cancer
How is DNA repaired?
- Base excision repair proteins cut out damaged bases - they are specific to specific damage types
- Nucleotide excision repair proteins are less specific and cut out sections of the damaged DNA strand
- DNA polymerase I replaces the DNA by copying the intact strand, and DNA ligase seals the gaps.
- Uracil N-Glycolase recognises Uracil in DNA and cuts it out
What is a Polysome?
mRNA in the cytosol become covered in ribosomes - several proteins made of the same mRNA simultaneously.
Exocytosis vs Endocytosis
Exo- out
Endo- in
What is a lysosome?
Full of degenerative enzymes, they degrade old damaged cellular components and some molecules imported into the cell.
Where are most mitochondrial proteins made?
The cytosol, as the majority are encoded by nuclear genes and then imported into the mitochondria. However mitochondria has it’s own ribosomes that translate mRNA synthesised in mitos.
What are the 3 mammalian RNA polymerases?
RNA Polymerase I - transcribes ribosomal RNA
RNA Polymerase III - transcribes tRNA
RNA Polymerase II - transcribes mRNA, microRNAs and non-coding RNAs.
What is a TATA box?
Eukaryotic promoter element, short run of T and A bases. Used as they form the lowest energy base-pairs and so are the easiest to unwind. TATA box is usually located about 25bp (very close) upstream from the start of transcription.
What is a CpG island?
Stretch of DNA where there are multiple points where a C in followed by G. These occur upstream of many genes and may have promoter activity.
The C’s within a CpG island will be protected from methylation.
How can you inactivate a gene expression?
Methylate it’s CpG island (happens in X-inactivation)
What is polyadenylation?
In eukaryotes transcription continues past the point where multiple polyadenylation sequences are present. The mRNA is then cut near the poly A sequence and a polyA tail is added.
What does a mature eukaryotic mRNA looks like?
5’ end cap nucleotide -> non-coding -> coding sequence -> non-coding -> polyA tail
What is polycistronic mRNA?
In prokaryotes, one mRNA will often encode multiple proteins which are required for a particular task. They are separated by non-coding sequences.