Hana Bashir

Question 1

Wild caught mice/rats/animals are good because

Answer 1

• more representative of entire population the experiment will be generalised to
• variability in genetics, environment, microbiome etc which are confounding variables.

Question 2

ARRIVE

Answer 2

• Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments
• randomisation method must be stated
• power calculation

Question 3

In mouse models it is

Answer 3

• good to randomise sex, age etc
• if all mice in one treatment happen to be younger, this will confound results

Question 4

Ethics

Answer 4

ethical approval number required

Question 5

miRNA effector

Answer 5

insert the target sequence into a protein and see if the miRNA cuts it?

Question 6

A good study would use both

Answer 6

male and female mice, although lots exclude females as results can be affected by stage in menstrual cycle - this is problematic

Question 7

Inappropriate techniques to use on small animal models

Answer 7

in-vivo imaging techniques i.e fMRI or PET due to small brain size

Question 8

Immunohistochemistry

Answer 8

positive control (add dye), negative control (add water)

Question 9

Yellow/Green fluorescent proteins

Answer 9

non toxic

Question 10

CRISPR

Answer 10

• can produce off target cuts
• any observed results that seem due to the treatment might not be

Question 11

retrotransposons often have

Answer 11

multiple copies across the genome

Question 12

RT-qPCR

Answer 12

quantify gene expression levels

Question 13

response variables

Answer 13

could be influenced by other factors eg environment

Question 14

calcium

Answer 14

spikes per minute, visualise the data

Question 15

Two independent mutants in parallel

Answer 15

• must have the same phenotype
• if you mutate A the first time and get a different phenotype to mutating A the second time then issue must be in experimental design and observed results may not be valid

Question 16

Generation of 2 independent lines for each translational reporter is appropriate as it

Answer 16

controls for insertion affects (if both lines show the same fluorescence pattern it suggests the fluorescence isn’t just an insertional artefact)

Question 17

Use of a constitutive promoter is appropriate when

Answer 17

• you want to confirm transformation (if a cell fluoresces you know it’s taken up the transgene)
• general cell tracking (if you want to label all cells e.g tag all neurons with GFP)

Question 18

C elegans, Arabidopsis, drosophila all have a

Answer 18

short generation time

Question 19

well annotated genome

Answer 19

• quicker/easier to identify genes of interest and their functions
• know where genes are located so more precise CRISPR, RNAi
• comparative studies

Question 20

maize genome

Answer 20

• too large to be fully sequenced
• use rice instead

Question 21

Zebrafish

Answer 21

suitable for studying human disease as have a highly conserved genome to us

Question 22

Yeast

Answer 22

suitable for studying cell cycle regulation as conserved core mechanisms

Question 23

takes about a month for

Answer 23

• lab mice to acclimatise
• longer for wild rats (otherwise stress may impact experiment and change the rats’ physiology)

Question 24

Random allocation into groups is appropriate method but

Answer 24

• randomisation method must be mentioned
• was it computer generated, people picking an envelope

Question 25

organisms have been divided into groups according to as many variables as possible to control for these, eg, age, sex, etc.

Answer 25

THEN once you've made groups you randomly assign which treatment each rat in the group gets (to reduce bias)

Question 26

Method of single housing the rats is not applicable to real world scenarios

Answer 26

rats pass on information culturally, so if poison makes them sick they may indicate this to conspecifics but this is complexity is missed by single housing

Question 27

No choice feeding of poison

Answer 27

good because otherwise rats may not eat it but bad because not applicable to real life where they could choose to avoid it.

Question 28

Not appropriate to fit a super complicated model to a small sample size (overfitting)

Answer 28

- unstable estimates - unreliable predictions - model learns noise instead of true patterns