Principles of Biology : Laboratory

Lab 13 : Protein Fingerprinting : Fish Muscle

Theme: Look at the theme I gave you in Lab 7 and write a similar, short, concise theme for our protein fingerprinting lab.

Materials and Methods: Attached: "Fish Fingerprinting with Electrophoresis" -  from Carolina Biological.
Results: The data is presented online at http://www.siskiyous.edu/class/bio1/lab13/

Analysis and Conclusion Section : Answer the questions that are included in the handout, but do so in a narrative style. Also, include the following in a paragraph concerning other applications of the technique:

1) How could protein electrophoresis be of value in determining whether a certain meat was of a legal or illegal species?
2) How could protein electophoresis be of value in determining whether a person, who suffers from sickle cell anemia is a homozygote or heterozygote for the disease? Explain.

Note: On the first question in the lab book, our data did not allow us to pursue this in detail. As I mentioned in class, the shark is not a true fish and the shark had the most different banding pattern. This makes sense: closely related species have closely matching proteins, more distant species have more distantly related proteins. Here is an evolutionary chart of fish you can use to examine our results. Maybe there is more to squeeze from our data -- can you find anything else? Similarities between most closely related and differences between others?





Nov. 20, 10:00 p.m.