Understand the importance of DNA methylation and the effect it has on transcription

Understand where DNA is more likely to be methylated (at the genome level and at the nucleotide level)

Be able to describe a situation where hyper-methylation can be a bad thing for a cell

5' cap:

• Why is RNA capped at the 5' end?
• How is RNA capped specifically?

Polyadenylation:

• What major function does polyadenylation have?
• Understand where capping and polyadenylation (and splicing but that is more for lecture 17) occurs

Understand the structure of a typical eukaryotic gene

Understand the concept of exon shuffling (slide 31 lecture 16) and how this is achieved in a general sense through activators and repressors

You do not need to know the details of the specific example in the lecture slides for Drosophila or the pluripotency switch

For the following mechanisms, understand/describe (to the detail discussed in lecture):

• The sequence features required for the mechanism to take place
• The steps of the mechanism
• The proteins involved at each step
• The outcome(s) of the mechanism

Mechanisms:

Methylation state perpetuation (slide 7 lecture 16)

Eukaryotic modification of mRNA

• Capping
• Polyadenylation

Termination of transcription

For mechanisms as well as the other proteins mentioned in the learning objectives, think about what would happen if you removed their functionality through mutagenesis.

Assays/techniques to be familiar with:

• DNAse hypersensitivity/footprinting
• cDNA sequencing (in general, just the details on slide 41 of lecture 16)