You can't sequence DNA/RNA directly...yet. You have to make some copy of it
so that you can a. generate lots and lots of it and b. label it somehow
(radiolabelled, fluorescently labelled) to detect.
RNA molecules are transcribed using the "anti-sense" strand as a template,
so that the the resulting RNA is "sense"...i.e. identical to the "sense"
strand of the original DNA.
When you make cDNA, you first make an "anti-sense" copy from the "sense"
RNA, then you make the "sense" strand on the "anti-sense" DNA strand
synthesized to create a doubel stranded cDNA.
This is then used as a template for sequencing.
So...all Genbank sequence are in the "sense" orientation, unless otherwise
specified (you will see it specified on theoretical ORF databases)
Cheers
Austin
P.S. and sorry if I made this too basic...don't mean to insult...
"Peter Frank" <peter_frankde at yahoo.de> wrote in message
news:8u26ev013fvgeb9mu9jn2qurhpjf6no0un at 4ax.com...
> This paragraph confused me quite a bit. If the mol type given in the
> definition line is xRNA (x standing for any possible letter or none),
> then the sequence given in the GenBank record may actually be the
> complementary cDNA sequence. Or it may not if the xRNA has been
> sequenced directly? How do I know exactly what sequence I have?
