In general, the resources listed here for the computational test will be somewhat helpful, but never as helpful as the materials covered in miRcore MVP meetings. We list most of the MVP meeting dates that cover each topic in hopes that you can refer to your notes/slides from those lectures.
Conceptual Test (40 minutes, multiple choice)
Neurodegenerative Diseases: (link to slides)
Conceptual Slides Review for Genes and Health Contest
Brain Anatomy and Function
https://mayfieldclinic.com/pe-anatbrain.htm
Cell Death
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/cell-death
Diseases Tested – Know symptoms and how they affect the brain/nervous system
Parkinson’s Disease
– https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/8525-parkinsons-disease-an-overview
– https://www.atrainceu.com/content/2-pathophysiology-parkinson%E2%80%99s-disease
Alzheimer’s Disease
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQsgiBh0QCY
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD19wCDpsY0
– https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-alzheimers
Multiple Sclerosis
– https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/multiple-sclerosis-ms
Frontotemporal dementia
– https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21075-frontotemporal-dementia
Huntington’s Disease
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcFlo2fDMMs
Prion Diseases
– https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/prion-diseases
– https://www.ohsu.edu/brain-institute/prion-diseases
– https://www.lakeforest.edu/news/prions-form-determines-function
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
Refer to the pamphlets you all made during the beginning of MVP!
Generic symptoms, known treatments, genes and environments, social impact
https://www.kaizenbraincenter.com/about-neurodegenerative-disease
It might be helpful to look into important genes for each disease
Statistics
Genetics
Computational Test (40 minutes, multiple choice + free response)
Examples of tasks for the computational test:
- Identify a gene related to the increased risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer’s with specific DNA sequences. This gene is on chromosome 19 and one of the four forms of this gene accounts for about 40 percent of all cases of late-onset Alzheimer’s. Write its general gene symbol, not differentiating the four forms.
- Identify the function of the gene (helpful sites: http://www.genecards.org, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene)
- Find its genome position (helpful sites: http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgGateway, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene)
- What is the total number of transcribed sequences?
- Find the mRNA sequences* (helpful sites: http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgGateway,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore).
- Find only coding sequences among the mRNA sequences* (helpful sites: http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgGateway: use “Genomic Sequence” rather than “mRNA” sequence for this task, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore).
*No need to worry about U/T conversion or upper/lower cases (i.e. T will be considered as U).
GEO2R About Page: Explanations on defining groups, volcano plots, and boxplots. Analyzing datasets with GEO2R
String About Page: Explanations on creating String maps, interpreting String maps and enrichment analysis (GO, KEGG), and navigating the platform. Goes a bit too in-depth though, would not recommend spending much time studying this.
KEGG About Page: Explanations on KEGG sidebar functions and includes a great diagram of KEGG map notations. Would definitely at least have a look at the map notations.