Chapter 15 Flashcards
A unit of genetic function found in bacteria and phages, consisting of a promoter, an operator, and a coordinately regulated cluster of genes whose products function in a common pathway
Operon
In phage DNA, a sequence of nucleotides near the start of an operon to which an active repressor can attach.
Operator
A protein that inhibits gene transcription
Repressor
A gene that codes for a protein, such as a repressor, that controls the transcription of another gene or group of genes
Regulatory gene
A small molecule that cooperates with a repressor protein to switch an operon off
Corepressor
A small molecule that inactivates the repressor
Inducer
A ring-shaped molecule made from ATP that is a common intracellular signaling molecule (second messenger) in eukaryotic cells
Cyclic AMP (cAMP)
A protein that binds to DNA and stimulates transcription of a gene
Activator
The expression of different sets of genes by cells with the same genome
Differential gene expression
The attachment of acetyl groups to certain amino acids of histone proteins
Histone acetylation
The presence of methyl groups on the DNA bases of plants, animals, and fungi
DNA methylation
Inheritance of traits transmitted by mechanisms not directly involving the nucleotide sequence
Epigenetic inheritance
Segments of noncoding DNA that help regulate transcription of a gene by serving as a binding site for a transcription factor
Control elements
A segment of eukaryotic DNA containing multiple control elements, usually located far from the gene whose transcription it regulates
Enhancers
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
Small single-stranded RNA molecule, generated from a hairpin structure on a precursor RNA transcribed from a particular gene
MicroRNAs (miRNA)
Small, single-stranded RNA molecules generated by cellular machinery from a long, linear, double-stranded RNA molecule
Small interfering RNAs (siRNA)
A technique used to silence the expression of selected genes
RNA interference (RNAi)
The process of base pairing between a gene and a complementary sequence on another nucleic acid molecule
Nucleic acid hybridization
A labeled single-stranded nucleic acid molecule used to locate a specific nucleotide sequence in a nucleic acid sample
Nucleic acid probe
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 technique for determining expression of a particular gene. It uses reverse transcriptase and DNA polymerase to synthesize cDNA from all the mRNA in a sample and then subjects the cDNA to PCR amplification using primers specific for the gene of interest
Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)
A double-stranded DNA molecule made in vitro using mRNA as a template and the enzymes reverse transcriptase and DNA polymerase
Complementary DNA (cDNA)
A method to detect and measure the expression of thousands of genes at one time
DNA microarray assays
