1. Lab#6 Bioinformatics
Dr. Belinda Román
Bioinformatics is the application of computer technology to manage biological
information. It is used to understand human diseases and in the identification of new
molecular targets for drug discovery. The genomic information is available in NCBI.
NCBI’s webpage gives public access to its databases. In the laboratory period, we
practiced searching for sequences by doing BLAST searches using accession numbers
(translating DNA sequence into protein), comparing two sequences, and searching for
publications. After the lab, each student needed to complete an assignment in which a
different scenario was presented. This scenario involved being the head of a research
project. I suspect that one of my staff members may be conducing illegal research with
the Golden Lion Tamarian, Leontopithecus rosalia, an endangered primate. Immediately
I need to find who is involved in this kind of research. To solve this situation, I have to
take samples of DNA that my staff members are using to compare them using the NCBI
website along with the BLAST tool. An outside company sent me the endangered
primate’s DNA sequence (positive control). After performing the BLAST search, I
concluded that not only one staff member but two were using the Golden Lion
Tamarian’s DNA. This is proved with the results obtained from the blast comparing the
sequences with other sequences. Sequence #1 and sequence #2 matched the Golden Lion
Tamarian’s nucleotide search.