Week 1 Flashcards
What are the three main levels of organisation in biodiversity?
- Ecosystems, species - populations
- Genes (What we’ll be doing in molecular genetics and evolution. You need diversity here to have it higher up levels)
Where are the two parts of an animal cell with DNA?
- nucleus (nuclear genome)
- mitochondrion (mitochondrial genome) - circular
How many chromosomes do we have?
- 46 chromosomes - 23 pairs
What are chromosomes made of?
- chromosome - chromatin - histone, dna double helix.
What are nucleotides made of?
- phosphate + sugar (deoxyribose) + nitrogenous base
What makes the backbone of DNA?
- sugar phosphate backbone (bases are in the middle)
What bonds are bases connected by?
- hydrogen bonds
What is a nucleic acid?
- a chain of nucleic acids
What’s the difference between A, T, C, G in terms of bonds?
- purines bond to pyrimidines
- T double A
- C triple G so is stronger
- CT are pyrimidines
How much DNA in a chromosome?
- 2 million base pairs in one chromosome
What is the genome?
- entire set of coding and non-coding genetic material.
Whats the point of non-coding DNA?
- it doesn’t contain information to make proteins
-however, parts are transcribed into functional non-coding RNA, and some play a role in transcription and translation regulation (promoters, regulatory sites)
What is the molecular unit of heredity?
- genes
What are loci made of?
- a string of nucleotides on a single chromosome.
Do you have non-coding DNA in genes? What are they?
yes, introns do not code for anything. Exons do. Ex for expressed
What do introns do?
- They are spliced out during transcription
- increase transcript levels by affecting the rate of transcription, nuclear export, and transcript stability
Transcription vs translation?
- RNA is transcribed from DNA to mRNA in the nucleus, then this is translated into a protein in the cytoplasm.
What is alternative splicing doing?
- exons being spliced out or not making a different protein after translation.
What would you write down in a lab?
- dates, sample names, locations
- chemicals, reagents/recipes
- protocols/modifications to standard protocols
- potential sources of error
- results
What does CO1 do?
- used for animal species identification, and we’re going to do a PCR on that to replicate it, sequence it, then use online databases to try find a species ID.
What is the mitochondrial control region?
- has a lot variation due to mutation so has a lot of historical information of migration etc.
- this only maternal (readable history and unbroken back through female ancestors)
What is the d-loop?
- the mitochondrial control region aka d loop, is often used to track maternal ancestry? It doesn’t really tell us any information - non-informative.
