Chapter 15 Flashcards
A protein that binds to DNA and stimulates gene transcription. In prokaryotes, they bind in or near the promoter; in eukaryotes, they generally bind to control elements in enhancers
Activator
A type of eukaryotic gene regulation at the RNA-processing level in which different mRNA molecules are produced from the same primary transcript, depending on which RNA segments are treated as exons and which as introns.
Alternative RNA splicing
A double-stranded DNA molecules made in vitro using mRNA as a a template and the enzymes reverse transcriptase and DNA polymerase. A cDNA molecule corresponds to the exons of a gene
Complementary DNA
A segment of non coding DNA that helps regulate transcription of a gene by serving as a binding site for a transcription factor. Multiple of these are present in a eukaryotic gene’s enhancer
Control element
A small molecules that binds to a bacterial protein and changes the protein’s shape, allowing it to bind to the operator and switch an operon off
Corepressor
Cyclic adenosine monophosphate, a ring shaped molecule made from ATP that is a common intracellular signaling molecule (second messenger) in eukaryotic cells. It is also a regulator of some bacterial operons
Cyclic AMP (cAMP)
The expression of different sets of genes by cells with the same genome
Differential gene expression
The presence of methyl groups on the DNA bases (usually cytosine) of plants, animals, and fungi (the term also refers to the process of adding methyl groups to DNA bases.)
DNA methylation
A method to detect and measure the expression of thousands of genes at one time. Tiny amounts of a large number of single-stranded DNA fragments representing different genes are fixed to a glass slide and tested for hybrid I action with samples of labeled cDNA
DNA microarray assay
A segment of eukaryotic DNA containing multiple control elements, usually located far from the gene whose transcription it regulates
Enhancer
Inheritance of traits transmitted by mechanisms not directly involving the nucleotide sequence of a genome
Epigenetic inheritance
The attachment of acetyl groups to certain amino acids of his tone proteins
Histone acetylation
A technique using nucleic acid hybridization with a labeled probe to detect the location of a specific mRNA in an intact organism
in situ hybridization
A specific small molecule that binds to a bacterial depressor protein and changes the repressor’s shape so that it cannot bind to an operator, thus switching an operon on.
Inducer
A small, single-stranded RNA molecule, generated from a hairpin structure on a precursor RNA transcribed from a particular gene. The blank associates with one or more proteins in a complex that can degrade or prevent translation of an mRNA with a complementary sequence
microRNA