UPSC Prelims 2016 · Question 56 of 98

UPSC Prelims 2016 question on Transcriptome Bioinformatics

In the context of the developments in Bioinformatics, the term ‘transcriptome’, sometimes seen in the news, refers to

  1. a range of enzymes used in genome editing
  2. the full range of mRNA molecules expressed by an organism
  3. the description of the mechanism of gene expression
  4. a mechanism of genetic mutations taking place in cells
Show answer

Answer: B. the full range of mRNA molecules expressed by an organism

Verdict

The answer is the full range of mRNA molecules expressed by an organism. That is what a transcriptome is.

Analysis

Bioinformatics applies computing to the management of biological information, and the suffix ome denotes the complete set of a class of molecules in an organism. The transcriptome is therefore the complete set of RNA transcripts, principally messenger RNA, produced from the genes of an organism at a given time. The genome editing enzymes option describes tools such as CRISPR associated nucleases. The mechanism of gene expression is a process rather than a molecular set, and genetic mutation in cells is a different phenomenon again.

Source

The Hindu report on the sequencing of the Asian elephant genome.

How to crack it

The suffix does all the work. Ome means the complete set, so genome is all the DNA, transcriptome all the transcripts, proteome all the proteins and microbiome all the resident microorganisms. Any option describing a technique or a process rather than a complete set is therefore wrong by construction. Learning the suffix rather than each term individually covers every future question in this rapidly growing vocabulary.

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