Use TWO Separate Answer Books for PART I and PART II.

PART I (Dr. Lam’s Part; 30 marks total)

Answer ALL Questions

Question 1

A dicot plant has the following properties: (i) salt tolerant, and (ii) ready transformable with
Agrobacterium.

(a) Using a yeast system, design one strategy to clone the genes conferring salt tolerance. (5
marks)

(b) After you have successfully cloned the putative genes in (a), suggest two tests to verify
that the cloned genes are responsible for salt tolerance in plants. (5 marks)

(c) You are asked to test if a target gene cloned in (a) is only expressed in a particular cell
type, explain what experimental approach you will employ. (5 marks)

(d) Two different genes (Gene X and Gene Y) were cloned in (a). Despite that either of the
Gene X or Gene Y can confer salt tolerance to certain extent, a strong synergistic effect
was observed when both Gene X and Gene Y were expressed in the same cell. Design
one experiment to test if the gene products of Gene X and Gene Y physically interact
with each other. (5 marks)

Question 2

In the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, random T-DNA insertional mutagenesis was performed.
Independent mutant lines were collected and propagated separately. Making use of this tool,
how can you study the functions of a cloned gene with known DNA sequence? (5 marks)

Question 3

The pharmaceutically important compound EPO is a glycoprotein. An animal specific complex

sugar attached to EPO is important to prolong the clearance time (time for the kidney to remove
EPO). Design a strategy to produce purified recombinant EPO glycoprotein that is ready for
PART II (Dr. Jiang’s Part; 22 marks total)

Answer ALL Questions

1. Why is it important to sequence the whole human genome and genomes of other model
organisms? (2 marks)

2. What is microarray? How would you use microarray technology to study disease genes?
(2 marks)

3. What are SNPs? Discuss its potential application in medicine. (2 marks)

4. Draw two maps to discuss the difference between genetic map and physical map. (1
marks)

5. Discuss and compare the technologies of somatic cell gene therapy and germ cell gene
therapy. (2 marks)

6. Name two examples of GM plants that have been on the market. Describe their working
principle and discuss the procedures used for their risk/safety assessment. (2 marks)

7. Describe and discuss the basic procedures used for sequence comparison on the whole
genome scale. (2 marks)

8. What is bioremediation? Discuss specific example. (2 marks)

9. Describe and discuss the key components of molecular biotechnology. (2 marks)

10. Briefly explain the following terms: (2 marks)

a) centimorgan; b) mapping; c) finished and pre-finished sequences; d) RH

11. Compare the two different sequencing approaches used by the HGP and Celera. (1 mark)

12. You are asked to clone a disease-related gene using the positional cloning approach.
Outline and discuss your experimental approach. How would you find out if the
identified one is a real disease gene? (2 marks)