Great video! I was just wondering what are other research besides cancer research that will be impacted by this experiment? Also, what exactly is a gene knockout experiment? Thank you!
Research on DNA damage repair mechanisms can help explain things such as embryonic lethality, shortened life span, rapid ageing, impaired growth, and a variety of syndromes. So that’s how this research can have many broader implications.
A gene knockout experiment is when you inactivate or remove a gene of interest to see how the cell or organism responds without this gene being present. This can, therefore, tell us the effect and function of this gene.
RT-PCR is known to have problems associated with its sensitivity, reproducibility, and specificity. This is mainly because reverse transcriptase has no proofreading ability, which leads to a high error rate when transcribing RNA into DNA. So because we didn’t do any validation experiments, it’s hard to know how accurate our PCR actually was.
We chose this gene for a variety of reasons. But the main one was that it’s true function was unknown according to the BLAST! database. However, in a previous study, it was shown that this gene was upregulated in the presence of DNA damage, which suggested it could’ve been involved in the DNA damage repair pathway.
curesymposium.org 
Great video! I was just wondering what are other research besides cancer research that will be impacted by this experiment? Also, what exactly is a gene knockout experiment? Thank you!
LikeLike
Research on DNA damage repair mechanisms can help explain things such as embryonic lethality, shortened life span, rapid ageing, impaired growth, and a variety of syndromes. So that’s how this research can have many broader implications.
A gene knockout experiment is when you inactivate or remove a gene of interest to see how the cell or organism responds without this gene being present. This can, therefore, tell us the effect and function of this gene.
LikeLike
Aside from potential primer degradation, what are some possible limitations of your research?
LikeLike
RT-PCR is known to have problems associated with its sensitivity, reproducibility, and specificity. This is mainly because reverse transcriptase has no proofreading ability, which leads to a high error rate when transcribing RNA into DNA. So because we didn’t do any validation experiments, it’s hard to know how accurate our PCR actually was.
LikeLike
What made you choose this gene in particular? What stood out?
LikeLike
We chose this gene for a variety of reasons. But the main one was that it’s true function was unknown according to the BLAST! database. However, in a previous study, it was shown that this gene was upregulated in the presence of DNA damage, which suggested it could’ve been involved in the DNA damage repair pathway.
LikeLike
Was using T. thermophila a personal choice, or was it assigned to you in this experiment?
LikeLike
T. thermophila was assigned to us, so everyone in the Cell Bio lab used it as their model organism.
LikeLike