21.3 Using DNA sequencing

• Explain how genome sequencing can help identify evolutionary relationships.

  Closer % match of genome sequence means less time since the two species diverged from a common ancestor
• Bioinformatics is transforming epidemiology. What is epidemiology?

  The incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases (and other factors relating to health)
• What’s the difference between Bioinformatics and Computational Biology?

  Bioinformatics – development of software to process large amount of data produced from sequencing etc.

  Computational Biology – using that data to create computer models and test theories
• Name one benefit to sequencing pathogens' genomes.

  Find out the source of an infection / Identify antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains to evaluate the use of antibiotics / monitor a disease outbreak / find useful targets in genome when developing new drugs
• What is proteomics?

  Study and amino acid sequencing of an organism's entire protein complement
• The amino acid sequence is not always what would be predicted from the genome sequence itself. Suggest two reasons why.

  1.) Genomes have exons and introns --> introns are removed + spliceosomes join different exons together in different ways to make different proteins

  2.) Protein modification by Golgi apparatus
• What is DNA barcoding?

  Identifying particular DNA sections that are common to all species but vary between them --> useful as comparison for evidence for evolution
• Once scientists have sequenced a gene they can work out the amino acid sequence of the protein it codes for. How?

  Triplet code has been worked out (i.e. all 64 combinations of three bases are known and decoded)
• What is synthetic biology?

  Creating biological molecules from scratch (e.g. "printing" a sequence of DNA)