Question

Briefly describe the following:
(a) Transcription
(b) Polymorphism
(c) Translation
(d) Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Part 1: Definition.
Transcription is defined as the process of synthesis of m-RNA from DNA.

Part 2: Transcription machinery.
Transcription requires a transcription unit, which comprises promoter, terminator and structural genes. For synthesis of m-RNA, an enzyme RNA polymerase (DNA dependent RNA polymerase) is required which polymerises NTPs in a template dependent manner. It occurs in three steps: initiation, elongation and termination. Since eukaryotes have exons and introns, processes like splicing, tailing and capping also occur in the transcription in eukaryotes.


Part 1: Definition.
Polymorphism refers to the allelic variation in DNA at a variou locus in human population with a frequency greater than $0.01$

Part 2: Application.
DNA polymorphism is the basis of DNA fingerprinting. It is a technique that allows identification of variations which are unique to each organism using a VNTR probe that shows a very high degree of polymorphism.


Part 1: Definition.
Translation is the process of synthesis of polypeptide chains from mRNA.It occurs in the cytoplasm.

Part 2: Translation machinery.
The ribosomes decode the codons present on the m-RNA and the t-RNA brings the corresponding amino acid to the site of protein synthesis. Further the amino acids form a peptide bond and this reaction is catalysed by the ribosomes. The process of translation begins with the initiation factor and when the ribosome reads the stop codon, the release factor binds to the ribosome and terminates the process of translation.


Part 1: Definition.
Bioinformatics is the study of science which combines biology with information technology.
It is a method to develop software and tools for storing, analysing, interpreting and acquiring biological data.

Part 2: Application.
The Human Genome project which aims to sequence all the chromosomes of Human DNA requires computer analysis, software and other tools for storing such huge sequence data. Thus bioinformatics played a vital role in the human genome project.
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