A Laboratory Exercise for Genotyping Two Human Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms

Abstract

The dramatic decrease in the cost of sequencing a human genome is leading to an era in which a wide range of students will benefit from having an understanding of human genetic variation. Since over 90% of sequence variation between humans is in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), a laboratory exercise has been devised in order to illustrate the importance of SNPs. Two separate SNPs are analysed, one of which has a significant effect on a person’s phenotype and one which does not. The genotyping protocol is relatively inexpensive and uses standard molecular biology reagents and equipment.

Keywords:

• Single nucleotide polymorphism
• DNA sequencing
• Bitter taste
• Genomics
• Genetic variation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Union College (Lincoln, Nebraska) for providing the supplies and equipment to create this method. Thanks also to the professor and students of the Union College general biology class for donating DNA and working with the plasmids and also to the physician assistant class of 2016 for their time and donated DNA. We also thank Dr Salvador Moguel, Brianna Payne, Scott Cushman, Victoria Leddy and Ellen Rose for their helpful comments and suggestions. This work was made possible through a grant from Union College.

Additional information

Funding

This work was made possible by institutional support from Union College.