In our simple model of DNA amplification we assumed that a successful amplification doubled the DNA each cycle. Reality isn't so kind! Two related problems encountered in DNA profiling are the issues of asymmetric peaks and "drop-out" where an allele produces a small to very-small peak compared to the other allele. Assume you have a sample with a heterozygous set of alleles. Let one of the alleles be successfully doubled each cycle but the second allele is (on average) only increased by 1.8. If the sample is subjected to 30 PCR cycles, how much larger will the "successful" peak be than the "less successful" peak? Set your answer up as a ratio of the "successful" /"unsuccessful" and round your number to 1 decimal place. (for example, if your calculations show that after 30 cycles the successful allele has 55340 copies and the unsuccessful has 10000 copies the ratio is 5.5)
In our simple model of DNA amplification we assumed that a successful amplification doubled the DNA each cycle. Reality isn't so kind! Two related problems encountered in DNA profiling are the issues of asymmetric peaks
and "drop-out" where an allele produces a small to very-small peak compared to the other allele. Assume you have a sample with a heterozygous set of alleles. Let one of the alleles be successfully doubled each cycle but the
second allele is (on average) only increased by 1.8. If the sample is subjected to 30 PCR cycles, how much larger
will the "successful" peak be than the "less successful" peak? Set your answer up as a ratio of the
"successful" /"unsuccessful" and round your number to 1 decimal place.
(for example, if your calculations show that after 30 cycles the successful allele has 55340 copies and the unsuccessful has 10000 copies the ratio is 5.5)
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