Academic Integrity: tutoring, explanations, and feedback — we don’t complete graded work or submit on a student’s behalf.

You are a researcher at a small biotech company and your company has just obtain

ID: 177831 • Letter: Y

Question

You are a researcher at a small biotech company and your company has just obtained the license for use of a human GENOMIC DNA fragment putatively encoding a potentially novel protein, which is thought to regulate p53, the known tumor suppressor protein. The scientists who originally cloned this GENE fragment HDM5 "claim" that HDM5 shares 90% DNA sequence homology with one of the HDM2 genes (refer to the review Levine & Oren, 2009). They propose that HDM5 may have HDM2-like properties and may be involved in regulating cell proliferation, and thus a good target to potentially develop as a cancer therapy. Your company has asked you to characterize the gene and gene products, as well as to provide an opinion as to its potential human therapeutic uses. Before proceeding, you wish to know whether this gene is actually expressed in humans (your target market for therapeutic development). Describe, in detail, 2 efficient experimental approaches to answer this question. Discuss whether your proposed methods measure synthesis or accumulation of the product.

Explanation / Answer

SDS PAGE (polyacrylamide gel) analysis will best suit for the characterization of gene and gene products having refernce gene as HDM2. Therapeutic uses include treatment for cancer cells which regulate p53 protein for tumor suppression.