1) In any human cell, ribosomal RNA (rRNA) will be by far the most abundant form of RNA found. How is it possible to isolate mRNAs away from rRNAs? (2 points)
mRNAs have a key property that allows them to be purified away
from other RNA molecules in a cell – poly A tail of 30-200nt length in eukaryotic cells. mRNA can either be extracted by using a column based method where the total RNA is ran over an oligo dT column and the flow through is discarded or using magnetic beads.
2) A method commonly used to identify transcription factor binding sites
in the genome is ChIP-Seq (1 point)
3) What does a position weight matrix describe? (1 point)
Position Weight Matrix or Position-Specific Scoring Matrix is used for
representation of motifs in biological sequences – describes the observed probability of basepairs in all the position of a sequence . Often represented as sequence logos, PWM is an alternative to consensus sequences.
4) An example of a use of SNP chips (1 point) is:
in linkage analysis to map disease loci, and determine disease susceptibility genes in individuals.