Chapter 8: Gel Electrophoresis Reading Guide

Name: Chaylee Adams

1. What was the term electrophoresis originally meant to refer to? The migration of charged
particles in an electrical field
2. Complete the following statement from the text: “ Studies by W.B. Hardy around the turn of

the twentieth century established that…” man biologically important molecules such as
enzymes and other proteins displayed the ability to be moved by the application of an
electrical field
3. What is an isoelectric point? The pH at which a protein will no longer migrate in an electrical
field
4. What do each of the following parts of the below formula mean? U = Qd / 4πr

Part: Definition
U Mobility of a molecule
Q The charge on the molecule
D Distance
π Viscosity of the solution used to wet the strips
r Radius of the molecule
5. The primary criteria for choosing polyacrylamide or agarose gel electrophoresis are:
length and whether or not the nucleic acid is single stranded or double stranded
6. When subjected to an electrical field, a molecule carrying a net negative charge will do
what? Migrate toward the positive pole
7. As a matter of practice, it is difficult to accurately resolve double-stranded nucleic acids
smaller than about 100 bases in an agarose gel because the sieving properties of agarose
are not fine enough.
8. Molecules longer than about 25,000 bp but shorter than around 2,000,000 bp will all run
at the same rate. This is called limiting mobility
9. The human body is a multi-cellular organism containing anywhere from 10 to 100 trillion
cells.
10. Within the chromosome are sections of genetic code that dictate a particular trait. These
sections are called genes.
11. The DNA sequence is split between coding and non-coding regions. The coding regions,
called exons are responsible for the instructions on how to produce a particular protein.
12. The non-coding regions are called introns.
13. Genes comprise approximately 5% of human DNA, with the other 95% consisting of
noncoding regions.
14. An allele is one variant of a gene.
15. A sequence polymorphism is the difference in the sequence of bases at a particular
locus, a specific location on a DNA molecule.
16. Length polymorphisms result from the difference in length at a particular DNA locus.

17. Define each of the following acronyms:

Acronym: Meaning:
STR Short tandem repeats
VNTR Variable number tandem repeats
RFLP Restriction Fragment Length polymorphism

18. What is the primary weakness of RFLP processing?

Is processing is its requirement for a relatively large quantity of fresh DNA