Describe an experimental strategy to determine whether an mRNA from mouse gene X is specifically type I (and not any of the other types). Give your rationale and show hypothetical results in your answer.
I cant think of a way to figure it out. I was first thinking of doing a an RT-PCR experiment and using polyacrymalide electrophoresis to see the difference in lengths, but im not too sure as to how good that answer would be. My second thought was to do a northern, but that would be just as effective as PCR.
Would it make sense to use each of the 4 mRNA's as probes and using a high stringency setting and see if they hybridize? i suppose that would be using a northern blot method.
I was also thinking of using some sort of way to express the proteins that are made from this "Gene X" and then check the functionality of it, but i dont know of any procedure that does that. Is there one?
Am i on the right track? how else would i answer this question. I am not too familiar with micro array, so if anyone knows what that is and can explain to me how it works that would be greatly appreciated.