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Hormones Lab Report

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1. Background/Introductions: Hormones are a regulatory substance produced in an organism and transported in blood to stimulate target cells or tissues into action. There are many glands and lobes in the endocrine system that produce hormones, but for this experiment we are particularly interested in the pituitary gland and the intermediate lobe because those are the two parts of it that produce Melanocyte Stimulating Hormone (MHS). These hormones are peptide hormones that are produced in response to UV light, but are not a direct feedback mechanism. When the hormones are secreted out of the glands, they travel through the bloodstream until they reach melanocytes located in the skin between the epidermal and dermal layers, where they transport …show more content…

Specifically in red hair, light skin people and in dogs.
2. Specific Aim(s): Questions that will be answered: How particular SNP’s ultimately affect the structure and function of the MSH receptor, leading to decreased signaling by the receptor. What is the normal structure and function of the MHS receptor? Where within the structure do normal amino acids reside? What is the side chain structure of the variant and non-variant amino acids at the polymorphic sites? How might the variant amino acids alter the structure and/or function of the protein?
A. The goal of this project is to find a correlation between the MSHR amino acid variation and skin type. Then use the correlation to explore the effects of amino acid variants on the structure and function of the MSH receptor.
B. Hypothesis: If we can perform the PCR reaction of a dogs DNA, then we will be able to compare its amino acid structure to its hair color, as well as simply compare it to a humans.
C. We will test this hypothesis by attempting to see if we can perform the PCR reaction for dogs, since the primers are optimized for humans. If we can we will sequence them with human DNA. Additionally, we will also see if we can modify the PCR reaction in order to obtain a PCR product from the dog DNA. If we get a product from the PCR reaction, it will be

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