gene Related Biological Terms

The biosynthesis of glucose from smaller, non-carbohydrate, metabolites, i.e. amino acids, tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates, lactate or glycerol.

Descriptive of a diversity according to some criterion for detecting it; e.g. a mixture of proteins or polynucleotides of differing electrophoretic mobility, size or sequence. Heterogeneity is contrasted with homogeneity, a uniformity according to some criterion. (see also heterogenous)

hnRNA; the unprocessed DNA transcripts, which includes pre-mRNAs.

see heterogeneous

A strategy for identification of receptor-binding regions of a protein by substitution of analogous regions from homologous proteins in order to preserve the native three-dimensional structure of the original protein; e.g. the substitution of regions of human growth hormone with regions from pig growth hormone, human prolactin or human placental lactogen, followed by determination of binding constants for the constructs.

(= transposon)

A method to construct a site-specific mutated gene and to select it away from the wild-type. A strain of E. coli with only weak dUTPase activity has high levels of dUTP and consequently incorporates dUTP into a plasmid DNA in competition with dTTP. This plasmid is used in an in vitro system as a template for DNA synthesis with a primer into which the desired mutation has been incorporated. The duplex, containing the wild-type sequence with Us replacing Ts (U-DNA) complementary to a strand with the usual DNA bases and incorporating the mutation, is introduced into a wild-type bacterium that can remove the inappropriate bases from, and thus inactivate, the U-DNA strand and leave the mutated strand to be replicated.

(see monodisperse)

A transposon or an insertion sequence; a polynucleotide sequence that can move from a chromosome or plasmid to another chromosome or plasmid. (see also intron homing; protein splicing)

A group of genes that code for homologous products with similar functions, e.g. the genes for globins. (see also superfamily)