News tagged with transcription factors

Researchers establish link between Nanog, FAK proteins

Vita Golubovskaya, PhD, and five colleagues from Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) have published basic research in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) about two proteins that are overexpressed, or produced in e ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Apr 27, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Determining a stem cell's fate: Biologists scour mouse genome for genes and markers that lead to T cells

What happens to a stem cell at the molecular level that causes it to become one type of cell rather than another? At what point is it committed to that cell fate, and how does it become committed? The answers ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Apr 12, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Transcription factors don't act like an 'on-off' switch, exhibit more complex binding behavior: study

Anyone who's tried a weekend home improvement project knows that to do a job right, you've got to have the right tools. For cells, these "tools" are proteins encoded by genes. The right genes for the job are turned on only ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Apr 11, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Study demonstrates cells can acquire new functions through transcriptional regulatory network

Researchers at the RIKEN Omics Science Center (OSC) have successfully developed and demonstrated a new experimental technique for producing cells with specific functions through the artificial reconstruction of transcriptional ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Mar 14, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Collective action: Occupied genetic switches hold clues to cells' history

If you wanted to draw your family tree, you could start by searching for people who share your surname. Cells, of course, don't have surnames, but scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Feb 03, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Researchers turn skin cells into neural precusors, bypassing stem-cell stage

Mouse skin cells can be converted directly into cells that become the three main parts of the nervous system, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is an extension of a previous ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Jan 30, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Improving crops from the roots up

Research involving scientists at The University of Nottingham has taken us a step closer to breeding hardier crops that can better adapt to different environmental conditions and fight off attack from parasites.

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jan 24, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Novel epigenetic patterns involved in cell fate regulation

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) publish exciting new results on the regulation of cell fate in the scientific journal Nature. They identified ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Dec 15, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Breakthrough in the production of flood-tolerant crops

As countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and parts of the United States and United Kingdom have fallen victim to catastrophic flooding in recent years, tolerance of crops to partial or complete submergence ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Oct 23, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Cell transformation a la carte

Researchers from the Haematopoietic Differentiation and Stem Cell Biology group at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), have described one of the mechanisms by which a cell (from the skin, for example) ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Oct 03, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Gene regulatory networks in the bee brain linked to behavior

A new study reveals that distinct networks of genes in the honey bee brain contribute to specific behaviors, such as foraging or aggression, researchers report.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Sep 26, 2011 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Researchers discover a switch that controls stem cell pluripotency

Scientists have found a control switch that regulates stem cell "pluripotency," the capacity of stem cells to develop into any type of cell in the human body. The discovery reveals that pluripotency is regulated by a single ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Sep 15, 2011 | popularity 4 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Nanosensors made from DNA may light path to new cancer tests and drugs

Sensors made from custom DNA molecules could be used to personalize cancer treatments and monitor the quality of stem cells, according to an international team of researchers led by scientists at UC Santa ...

Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine

created Sep 07, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

'TF beacons' may light path to new cancer tests and drugs

Scientists are reporting development of a long-sought new way to detect the activity of proteins that bind to the DNA in genes, often controlling the activity of genes in ways that make cells do everything ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Sep 07, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Orchestrator of waste removal rescues cells that can't manage their trash

Just as we must take out the trash to keep our homes clean and safe, it is essential that our cells have mechanisms for dealing with wastes and worn-out proteins. When these processes are not working properly, unwanted debris ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Sep 01, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Transcription factor

In the field of molecular biology, a transcription factor (sometimes called a sequence-specific DNA binding factor) is a protein that binds to specific DNA sequences and thereby controls the transfer (or transcription) of genetic information from DNA to mRNA. Transcription factors perform this function alone or with other proteins in a complex, by promoting (as an activator), or blocking (as a repressor) the recruitment of RNA polymerase (the enzyme which performs the transcription of genetic information from DNA to RNA) to specific genes.

A defining feature of transcription factors is that they contain one or more DNA binding domains (DBDs) which attach to specific sequences of DNA adjacent to the genes that they regulate. Additional proteins such as coactivators, chromatin remodelers, histone acetylases, deacetylases, kinases, and methylases, while also playing crucial roles in gene regulation, lack DNA binding domains, and therefore are not classified as transcription factors.

For more information about Transcription factor, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.