You have sequenced a 100-kb region of the Bacillus anthr...

Question

You have sequenced a 100-kb region of the Bacillus anthracis genome (the bacterium that causes anthrax) and a 100-kb region from the Gorilla gorilla genome. What differences and similarities might you expect to see in the annotation of the sequences—for example, in number of genes, gene structure, regulatory sequences, repetitive DNA?

Accepted Answer

Hey, everyone. Let's take a look at this question together. Shotgun sequencing is a high throughput method for sequencing DNA. A major disadvantage of shotgun sequencing is what is it? Answer choice A it can sequence small size genome only answer choice B it requires a large sample of the genome. Answer choice C it is prone to errors in the reads or answer choice D it results in inadequate coverage of the genome. Let's work this problem out together to try to figure out which of the following answer choices is a major disadvantage of shotgun sequencing. So first, let's recall what shotgun sequencing is so that we can figure out which of the following is a major disadvantage. And we know that shotgun sequencing involves the cutting of the DNA into tiny segments and randomly sequencing those segments. So for example, let's say that we have a book in and in that book are several pages in different chapters. And so we take each of those pages of the different chapters and we cut them into all of these different tiny strands. And next, we want to put those strands back together so that we have a complete book. But the issue with that is that while we have all of those different strips that we can line up, they might be from different chapters of the book. So they will look similar, but they might not be from the same page or even the same chapter resulting in errors of reading those sequences. Which means that answer choice C it is prone to errors in the reads is the correct answer. Since that is a major disadvantage of shotgun sequencing. Since it involves cutting those DNA into tiny segments and randomly sequencing them, it is prone to those errors throughout the sequencing process which leads to inaccurate readings, making answer choice C a major disadvantage and the correct answer. I hope you found this video to be helpful. Thank you and goodbye.

Key Concepts

Genomic Annotation

Comparative Genomics

Repetitive DNA

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