Lecture 2

Question 1

What balances proliferation of databases?

Answer 1

Integration

Question 2

What is a “schema”?

Answer 2

A discription of how the information in a database is organised

Question 3

List 3 forms of information in Archival/Primary databases

Answer 3

DNA and protein (annotated)

Variations and Variants (Haplotyoes and disease associated mutations)

Protein expression patterns

Question 4

List 3 forms of information in Derived databses

Answer 4

Sequence motif (signature patterns of protein families)

Classifications/relationships (connections between common features of entries)

Databases of databases (like Metabase)

Question 5

For ease of access, how should databases be structured?

Answer 5

To reflect likely queries

Question 6

Give 2 advantages of the Perl/Python scripting languages

Answer 6

Used to run other programs

Can be interpreted

Human readable

Question 7

What is the use of identifying orthologues with PSI-BLAST?

Answer 7

Can be used to test for gen function conservation by the formation of ectopic tissues (like PAX6 and eyeless[drosophilla])