Lab 9: Biological Databases

Question 1

Describe the importance of model organisms.

Answer 1

Model organisms allow scientists to conduct experiments faster, cheaper, and easier than could be done on humans. Its important because it does not harm humans in any way.
Example:
- Drosophila
- Mouse
- E.coli
- zebrafish

Question 2

What makes Drosophila a good model system? What are it’s limitations?

Answer 2

Drosophila is a good model system because it has many similar mechanisms that operate the same way as humans.
- **eyes: **same genes as humans
- nervous system: nerve cells as humans nerve cells.
- **Heart **: both have pacemaker cells
- Digestive system: similar organizaton in processing food.
- Reproductive tract: Drosophila has testes and ovaries.

Its limitations could be that they have very similar mechanisms as humans but not everything is the smae structure and functions as a human, but most of it is.

Question 3

What kind of information can you look up in FlyBase? In HPA?

Answer 3

On Flybase you can find find information all about Drosophila genes.
- Gene functions and interactions
- Orthologs (Drosophila genes that are related to genes in other species, including humans)
- Drosophila genes that are relevant to human diseases
- The name, symbol or ID number for a gene, so you can research it on other databases.

IN **HPA ** it contains many types of information, including what the proteins do, where they are active, and what types of diseases they are involved in. We can use it to find out what has been discovered about genes we’re interested in.

Question 4

What is an ortholog? Why is this important?

Answer 4

Orthologs are genes in different species that originated from the same ancestor and have similar sequences and functions.

Knowing this information, especially Flybase helps us understand the function of the gene and how it relates to human genes.