Wednesday, January 7, 2009

MBB 141 Question 36


36. Comparative genomics offers insights into the relationship between homologous genes and the organization of genomes. When the genome of C. elegans was sequenced, it was striking that some types of sequences were distributed nonrandomly. Consider the data obtained for chromosome V and the X chromosome shown here. The following figure shows the distribution of genes, the distribution of inverted and tandem repeat sequences, and the location of ESTs in C. elegans that are highly similar to yeast genes.

a.
How do the distributions of genes, inverted and tandem repeat sequences, and conserved genes compare?

b. Based on your analysis in (a), what might you hypothesize about the different rates of DNA evolution (change) on the arms and central regions of autosomes in C. elegans?

c. Curiously, meiotic recombination (crossing-over) is higher on the arms of autosomes, with demarcations between regions of high and low crossing-over at the boundaries between conserved and nonconserved genes seen in the physical map. Does this information support your hypothesis in (b)?


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