You work in a laboratory that studies the molecular biology oftribbles. [Although tribbles are an alien life form, assumehere that the molecular biology of tribbles is identical to that ofeukaryotes on Earth.]
Your lab has a genomic library of tribble DNA, as well as a cDNAlibrary made with mRNA extracted from whole tribbles. The lab alsohas a collection of live tribbles that can be used to isolate RNAor DNA, and a supply of fixed tribbles that can be stained for geneexpression.
Your advisor provides you with a cloned 100 bp DNA fragment thatrepresents part of the protein-coding region of a tribble gene.Using the tools described in the previous paragraph and themolecular biology techniques we have discussed in class, how wouldyou accomplish each of the following aims? Note: try to come upwith the simplest and modest direct approach that will give you thedesired information.
A. Determine the amino acid sequence of the complete proteinproduced by that gene.
B. Determine whether or not the gene contains introns.
C. Determine whether the RNA produced by that gene experiencesalternative splicing.
D. Determine the length of the mature mRNA(s) produced by thegene. This includes the UTRs and the poly-A tail.
E. Determine which cells in the tribble body do and do notexpress mRNA from this gene.
F. You discover a blood stain in the lab, and you want todetermine whether it is human blood or tribble blood. How can youdo this using the molecular biology tools described above?
