Alu Synthesis Lab Report
Determining Genotypic Frequencies for Alu Insertion Polymorphism at the PV92 Locus
Introduction
An Alu element is a short stretch of non-coding DNA found in primates. It gets its name from the single recognition site for the endonuclease Alu I, located near the middle of the Alu element. Alu elements are transposable DNA sequences that copy and insert themselves into new chromosome locations. They are regarded as “selfish DNA” because they do not encode protein and appear to only exist for their own replication. These Alu insertions are significant because each insertion is evidence of a unique transposition event that occurred only once during primate evolution. This means that all primates sharing an Alu allele stem from a common ancestor, …show more content…
The problem with this experimental setup as well as Batzer’s study was that the sample sizes were too small to provide accurate Alu frequencies. The Alu frequency generated from a sample of 45 people is simply not representative of the entire population of European-Americans. With a larger sample size, the effect of random chance on the results will be greatly reduced. Future experiments will include samples of varying races. Samples based on race would be more meaningful because race the largest impact on Alu frequencies. Furthermore, sampling by race would allow comparison to published data, which also takes samples based on race.
References
Batzer MA, Arcot SS, Phinney JW, Alegria-Hartman M (1996) Genetic Variation of Recent Alu Insertions in Human Populations. J Mol Evol 42:22-29
Batzer MA, Deininger PL (1991) A human-specific subfamily of Alu sequences. Genomics
9:481-487
Batzer MA, Rubin CM, Hellman-Blumberg U, Alegria-Hartman M, Leeflang EP, Stern JD, Bazan
HA, Shaikh TH, Deininger PL, Schmid CW (1995) Dispersion and insertion polymorphism in two small subfamilies of recently amplified human Alu repeats. J Mol Biol 247:418-427
Matera AG, Hellmann U, Hintz MF, Schmid CW (i990b) Recently transposed Alu repeats result from multiple source genes. Nucleic Acids Res 18:6019-6023
Shen M-R, Batzer MA, Deininger PL (1991) Evolution of the master Alu gene(s). J Mol Evol
Introduction
An Alu element is a short stretch of non-coding DNA found in primates. It gets its name from the single recognition site for the endonuclease Alu I, located near the middle of the Alu element. Alu elements are transposable DNA sequences that copy and insert themselves into new chromosome locations. They are regarded as “selfish DNA” because they do not encode protein and appear to only exist for their own replication. These Alu insertions are significant because each insertion is evidence of a unique transposition event that occurred only once during primate evolution. This means that all primates sharing an Alu allele stem from a common ancestor, …show more content…
The problem with this experimental setup as well as Batzer’s study was that the sample sizes were too small to provide accurate Alu frequencies. The Alu frequency generated from a sample of 45 people is simply not representative of the entire population of European-Americans. With a larger sample size, the effect of random chance on the results will be greatly reduced. Future experiments will include samples of varying races. Samples based on race would be more meaningful because race the largest impact on Alu frequencies. Furthermore, sampling by race would allow comparison to published data, which also takes samples based on race.
References
Batzer MA, Arcot SS, Phinney JW, Alegria-Hartman M (1996) Genetic Variation of Recent Alu Insertions in Human Populations. J Mol Evol 42:22-29
Batzer MA, Deininger PL (1991) A human-specific subfamily of Alu sequences. Genomics
9:481-487
Batzer MA, Rubin CM, Hellman-Blumberg U, Alegria-Hartman M, Leeflang EP, Stern JD, Bazan
HA, Shaikh TH, Deininger PL, Schmid CW (1995) Dispersion and insertion polymorphism in two small subfamilies of recently amplified human Alu repeats. J Mol Biol 247:418-427
Matera AG, Hellmann U, Hintz MF, Schmid CW (i990b) Recently transposed Alu repeats result from multiple source genes. Nucleic Acids Res 18:6019-6023
Shen M-R, Batzer MA, Deininger PL (1991) Evolution of the master Alu gene(s). J Mol Evol