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Non Taster Lab Report

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The first step in determining whether or not an individual was a taster or non-taster of phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) was to obtain a sample of their DNA. Salt water was flushed in cheeks vigorously for 90 seconds and then the salt water was emptied back onto the 15-ml tube. The tube was centrifuged for 2 minutes to produce a pellet at the bottom of the tube. Then, the liquid was drained off of the top of the contents in the tube to leave only the pellet. Next, 15ml of Chelex was added to the tube containing the pellet. Chelex binds to metal ions, which have the ability to interfere with PCR. The tube is then placed in boiling water for 10 minutes to lyse the cells. After the tube is boiled it is important to keep it on ice for the remainder of the experiment. Three microliters of the clear supernatant (DNA) is then added to the tube of PCR mixture. In this PCR mixture you can find Taq polymerase, dNTPs, primers, MgCL2, buffer, and water. One of the primers altered the sequence of the DNA. In the sequence, one of the Adenine bases was changed to a Guanine. This …show more content…

While looking at the Sanger sequence of my DNA I was looking specifically for the sequence GGCC. There were three spots called snips that I needed to look at in my DNA sequence. In Figure #2 the first snip is shown. The G seen at the beginning of the blue section would be a C and the two in front of that base pair would be GG for my sequence to show me as a taster. In the next snip (Figure #3) the base pair before the blue section would be C for tasters and T for non-tasters. In my sequence although I am a non-taster I had a C. However, if you look at the graph of probability in Figure 3, the confidence that the base pair C is low. The final snip (Figure #4) has a sequence of ATCCT highlighted in blue, which codes for a non-taster. If I were a taster of PTC the sequence would be

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