STUDY GUIDE FOR EXAM 2

The purpose of this study guide is only to guide you about the content. This does not
reflect the actual style of questions that can be asked in the exam.
You should read all handouts and notes posted on blackboard, relevant portions
from Lab Manual and Schaums Outlines.
The exam has questions that are problem solving type, objective type and short
answer type.
You will be asked to write about an experiment, therefore prepare writing about an
experiment of your choice other than the Drosophila Cross.
Topics included in the exam are the following:
Monohybrid and Dihybrid Drosophila Cross
- Importance of Drosophila for genetic studies,
- Drosophila Life cycle stages,
- Determining and Identifying sex
- Sex indices, how to calculate them and what are the phenotypes
- Phenotypes of the mutants that you have studies in lab (sepia, scarlet, white,
apterous, ebony, vestigial etc) and which chromosomes are they mutated in. These
are given at the end of the Carolina manual page 27-29
- Culturing of Drosophila-basics
- Genetic notation and Phenotypes
- Monohybrid and dihybrid crosses
- Sex-linked inheritance
- Identifying the genotype and phenotype of the parents, if you know the offsprings
phenotype OR genotype?
- Problems related to sex linked inheritance.
Sordaria Genetics
General background of Sordaria genetics like
- What is Sordaria?
- How does meiosis and Crossing over in Sordaria lead to different
arrangements of ascospores,
- I division segregation and II division segregation and genetic
determination of spore coloration.
- Genes responsible for spore coloration and genotypes for
different colors.
- Pay close attention to how different cross over events lead to
different ascospore arrangement.
Study figure 4 given in LM page 71 closely to understand
differences in cross over events.

Calculating recombination frequency and map distance based on first and second
division segregation, like you did in lab.

Complementation in Yeast
- Yeast genetic background - Yeast life cycle, Importance of yeast for
genetic studies,
- Yeast mating type, mutants that require adenine and their growth
patterns.
- Terms such as homothallic, heterothallic, auxotroph, prototraph,
pheromone, shmoos etc.
- What is a complimentation test. Why are haploid strains required.
- How to identify genotype and mating type of unknown strains that can
compliment known strains and what would be the phenotypes on
plates?
PCR
- What are the components required for a PCR reaction? And what is the role of
each component? Which enzyme is required and why?
- What are the stages of PCR reaction, temperatures of stages and what happens in
each step?
- Where can you obtain the DNA samples from human body that can be used for
PCR
- Which regions of DNA are used in forensics for PCR? Coding? Non-coding etc
- What are STRs?
- How are forward and reverse primers designed? Look at the figure in the handout
to see how primers can be determined by looking at the DNA template. They
should be complimentary to the template strand. Also see which would be
forward/reverse based on direction of DNA synthesis.
- Problems on # of copies, # of cycles (like the ones you were asked in quiz)
Restriction Digestion
- What are the restriction enzymes, where are they obtained from?
- How does bacteria protect itself from them?
- What are sticky and blunt cuts?
- What is a palindrome and how can you identify them?
- Enzymes used in the laboratory?
- What are the sources of restriction enzymes?
- Problems on how many times a RE can cut the linear DNA vs the circular DNA, how
many sites are present etc.
- Problem on number of fragments with different restriction sites:
Example: A restriction enzyme recognizes a 6 base restriction sequence.
About how many fragments of 100000 bp DNA, would you expect if you digested
it with this enzyme?

Solution : An 4 base pair recognition site will appear, on the average,

once in about 4n = 46 = 4096, therefore, DNA of 100000 would be cut
into 100000/4096 = about 25 fragments.
How to construct a restriction map of linear DNA.
Problem : The restriction digestion of a 9 kb linear molecule with the enzyme PstI
and Sma I and a combination yielded fragments of the following sizes: PstI: 3.0
AND 6.0; SmaI: 5.5, 3.5; PstI + SmaI: 3.5, 3.0, 2.5 and. Give the maps compatible
with the fragment sizes given.
Solution :

- How to construct map of circular DNA

Hardy- Weinberg Principle
- Problems related to determining the frequency of homozygous recessive,
homozygous dominant and heterozygous genotypes, frequencies of dominant and
recessive alleles, actual numbers of individuals in a population with or without the
effect etc. (like given in your manual)
Polygenic Inheritance
- Problems like those given in manual involving three or four genes.
- Finger print patterns
Blood Group Genetics
- Problems involving determining the blood group of children given parents blood
group or vice versa
- Problems on which blood groups can donate to which individuals and can receive
from whom. You should know the reason behind your answer, why or why not can a
certain individual donate/receive blood from another individual.
- Understanding of blood group antigens and antibody
You will be asked to write about an experiment, therefore prepare writing about an
experiment of your choice (other than the Drosophila Cross).