Bio informnatics

[zach_kopet]

My name is zach,i am 15. I would like to know if there arew any suitable projects that have to do with the replication of DNA and cloning..

[Limeybean]

Hi Zach,

Bioinformatics is a great field of study! It looks like there are some good bioinformatics project ideas already on science buddies. Check out :

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... p008.shtml
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... p011.shtml
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... p003.shtml

If these are not quite what you are looking for, but you like the idea of working in silico on a DNA replication project you might consider looking at RNA viruses. When RNA viruses replicate they accumulate mutations pretty quickly because RNA dependent DNA polymerases lack proofreading mechanisms. There is a lot of sequence data available for these viruses (e.g. HIV, Influenza A, etc.) on NCBI (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore) and you could ask a lot of interesting questions regarding the accumulation of mutations over time.

What kind of cloning you are interested in (e.g. using plasmid vectors, cloning entire organisms etc)?

If you wanted to something more experimental, but related to DNA repaire there are two projects that look at the effect of UV light on an organisms. This would indirectly address DNA replication errors due to UV light induced mutations.

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... p036.shtml
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... p017.shtml

I hope that this helps.

Cheers,
Emily

[zach_kopet]

Thank you Emily .....this will hopefully help my work....i was wondering if there is any way to make a simulator or if there are any programs that will allow me to put in variables in order to get certain results. (i would do this if i were to study RNA virus mutations.)