Unit 4 Biology
DNA Technology and Genomics Part I
Guiding Questions
1. Why is DNA technology and the study of genomics useful?
2. As well as identifying the DNA profile of an individual, what else can DNA technology
be used for?
3. What are the four major categories that techniques for working with DNA can be
divided into?
4. Why is SDS added when extracting DNA?
5. Why are proteases used when extracting DNA?
6. Why do we need so many copies of DNA?
7. What is the polymerase chain reaction?
8. What cell system does it exploit?
9. What are the three steps in PCR?
10. What enzyme is used in the extension step?
11. What does PCR do?
12. What is different about RT-PCR?
13. What enzyme does RT-PCR use?
14. Why is oligo dT able to be used as a primer for RT-PCR?
15. How does cloning DNA into bacteria allow us to have multiple copies of DNA?
16. What do restriction enzymes do in bacteria?
17. What else can they be used for?
18. What is the definition of a restriction enzyme?
19. How are blunt ends produced?
20. How are sticky ends produced?
21. Why does hybridization occur between sticky ends of DNA fragments?
22. What enzyme allows DNA fragments to be joined?
23. What charge is carried by the phosphate backbone of DNA molecules?
24. How is size determined by gel electrophoresis?
25. How is the DNA visualized after gel electrophoresis?
26. How do DNA sequencing reactions differ from PCR reactions?
27. What happens when a dideoxynucleotide is incorporated in the reaction?
28. How do we read DNA sequences?
29. What are some of the problems associated with assembling genome information?
30. What are the steps in analysing a genome?
31. What is hybridization used for?
32. What is the job of the tagged oligonucleotides used during hybridization procedures?
33. What are the steps in a Southern blot?
34. How does Northern blotting differ from Southern blotting?
35. What is a microarray?
36. What quality of mRNA does a DNA microarray exploit?
37. What does a computer allow us to do in conjunction with the microarray?
38. What technique is used to identify individuals?
39. Why is only a small amount of DNA needed to identify individuals?
40. Is a person’s DNA profile constant?
41. Why can DNA be used to solve ‘cold cases’?
42. What are some of the applications of DNA identification?
43. What sources can DNA for identification come from?
44. What are hypervariable regions of DNA?
45. What is an STR?
46. What is a HVR?
47. Where are STRs located?
48. Can they be used to identify one person uniquely?
49. When is STR analysis used?
50. Why is mtDNA identification less precise?
51. When is mtDNA identification used?
52. Which situations would mtDNA identification be likely to be applied to?
53. What DNA did the original technique of DNA fingerprinting use?
54. What steps were involved in DNA fingerprinting?
55. What technique has replaced DNA fingerprinting?
56. Why are STRs termed short?
57. How are the alleles at an STR locus named?
58. How many alleles can an individual have at a particular STR locus?
59. Why do we use STRs rather than minisatellites (DNA fingerprinting)?
60. How many STR markers to Australian states use for forensic purposes?
61. Why were these markers chosen?
62. What other marker is used and why?
63. What happens to the number of different genotypic combinations in a population as the
number of STRs analysed increases?
64. What is the chance of an individual DNA profile based on nine STR loci being identical
to that of another?