06 Bioinformatics Fundamentals Free Online FlashCards

What is bioinformatics?

Bioinformatics uses computational methods to store, organize, compare, and interpret biological data.

Which symbols distinguish common DNA and RNA sequences?

DNA commonly uses A, C, G, and T; RNA commonly uses A, C, G, and U.

How is a sequence represented in FASTA?

FASTA stores a sequence with a description line beginning with >, followed by the sequence.

What is a sequence annotation?

Annotations describe sequence features, such as gene locations, coding regions, or the organism name.

What kind of sequence resource is GenBank?

GenBank is an archival collection of submitted nucleotide sequences.

When is global alignment useful?

Global alignment compares sequences across their full lengths and is useful for similar sequences of the same length.

What does BLAST report when searching a sequence database?

BLAST compares a query sequence with sequences in a selected database and reports regions of local similarity. Similarity suggests a relationship but does not prove identical function.

What does a BLAST E-value estimate?

An E-value estimates the number of alignments at least as strong as the observed one expected by chance in a search of that size. A smaller value generally indicates a less chance-like match.

What information does FASTQ retain that FASTA does not?

FASTQ stores sequencing reads together with a per-base quality score, indicating confidence in each base call.

What does a versioned accession help identify?

An accession number identifies a database record. A versioned accession can specify which sequence revision was analyzed.

What does RefSeq provide?

RefSeq provides a non-redundant set of reference sequences, including genomes, transcripts, and proteins, with varying annotation and curation.

What does the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) store?

SRA stores high-throughput sequencing data and associated information about samples and experiments.