Topic 8—B: Genome projects and Gene Technologies- 1. Genome projects

Question 1

What is a genome?

Answer 1

• The entire set of DNA, including all the genes, in an organism

Question 2

In genome projects, what do scientists work to determine?

Answer 2

• The complete genome sequence of an organism

Question 3

What does the scientists success depend on?

Answer 3

• Complexity of the organism
• Technology that is available

Question 4

What has improvements in technology allowed us to do?

Answer 4

• Sequence the genomes of a variety of organisms, from bacteria to humans

Question 5

What do gene sequencing methods only work on?

Answer 5

• Fragments of DNA so if you want to sequence the entire genome of an organism, you need to chop it up into smaller pieces first

Question 6

What happens to the smaller pieces?

Answer 6

• They are sequenced and then put back in order to give the sequence of the whole genome

Question 7

What can we find now that we have the complete sequence of the humans genome?

Answer 7

• Genes causing inherited diseases can be found fast

Question 8

What is a proteome?

Answer 8

• The full range of proteins an organism is able to produce

Question 9

Simple organisms (e.g. bacteria)

Answer 9

• They don’t have much non-coding DNA
• Meaning it is relatively easy to determine their proteome from the DNA sequence of their genome
• Can be useful in medical research and development
• e.g. identifying the protein antigens on the surface of disease-causing bacteria and viruses can help in the development of vaccines to prevent disease
• Being bale to determine the proteomes of disease-causing bacteria and viruses also allows pathogens to be monitored during outbreaks of disease which can lead to better management of the spread of infection and can help to identify antibiotic resistance factors

Question 10

Complex organims

Answer 10

• They contain large sections of non-coding DNA
• They also contain complex regulatory genes which determine when the genes that code for particular proteins should be switched on or off
• This makes it more difficult to translate their genome into their proteome because its hard to find the bits that code for proteins among the non-coding and regulatory DNA
• However, work is being done on the human proteome

Question 11

In the past, what were the sequencing methods like?

Answer 11

• Labour intensive
• Expensive
• Only could be done on a small scale

Question 12

What are the sequencing methods like now?

Answer 12

• Automated
• Cost-effective
• Can be done on a large scale

With newer, faster techniques, scientists can now sequence whole genomes much more quickly