Genetic Eng: How do you ID the gene from the protein

[nimrod1212]

Say I have a protein like insulin. I want to find the gene for it, in say the human genome (this is the era before gene banks). Please can someone tell me the steps that get me back to that DNA sequence. i.e. How did Herbert Boyer originally reverse engineer?

I've googled this up and down the yin-yang and looked in various text books (e.g. Lodish et al.). Loads of info about restriction enzymes and ligases and vectors, which I know about. They all jump over the interesting bit at the beginning and simply say, isolate the gene, next... What comes after is the boring tools and cookery, however clever.

Thanks!

Jim

[JackBean]

you need to create either cDNA or gDNA library; you translate piece of your protein into DNA, possibly some part, which is not too much degenerated and make probe from that. Then you mix it together and look, which fragment aligns.

[Skimp210]

These videos might help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is4MpK44s-o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWEiQlEUFak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDvNdbYzWyk

[JackBean]

how can these videos help with his question?