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F215 How to sequence a genome

I'm doing OCR F215 Biology in a few weeks, and I'm getting really confused about the very first point on the specification for 'Genomes and gene technologies', which is simply 'outline the steps involved in sequencing the genome of an organism'.

My CGP revision guide says that you have to use BAC's (bacterial artificial chromosomes), but this seems unnecessarily complicated and I don't see the point of it! Why can't you just use PCR? If you're sequencing a genome, why is this any different to just sequencing lots of DNA? My textbook doesn't mention BAC's at all, and my teacher told me that she'd never heard of them, and to just ignore that section in the book. I also can't find any past paper questions on it, so I don't even know whether I'm supposed to be learning about BAC's!

So if someone could tell me how OCR would like me to answer a question about how to sequence a genome, that would be great!

I'm sorry if there are other threads about this, but I couldn't find any! Any help would be really appreciated :smile:
Reply 1
Avatar for pbaps
pbaps
I don't do OCR so I won't be that much help... but PCR is just a method of amplifying DNA fragments, so while it can be useful in sequencing to create many copies of a fragment, it won't actually be used to determine the base sequence by itself.
Reply 2
Avatar for GoldenLoin
GoldenLoin
OP
1
Original post by pbaps
I don't do OCR so I won't be that much help... but PCR is just a method of amplifying DNA fragments, so while it can be useful in sequencing to create many copies of a fragment, it won't actually be used to determine the base sequence by itself.


Sorry, what I was trying to say was that it seems like BAC's are used mainly to build up a quantity of a large quantity of DNA, and so why can't you just use PCR for this instead (and then combine it with the other techniques like electrophoresis to sequence it)? :smile:
Reply 3
Avatar for GoldenLoin
GoldenLoin
OP
1
Can anyone else help with this??
Reply 4
Avatar for calooee
calooee
7
HELP I don't understand this either, what do we and don't we need to know?

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