Related topics: genes · cells · gene expression · stem cells · dna sequences

The definitive guide to getting tall

There are many genes, or at least markers of one sort or another within our DNA sequences, that have been associated with height. By some estimates the number could be thousands. However, finding those select genes that have ...

Transcription factors may inadvertently lock in DNA mistakes

Transcription factor proteins are the light switches of the human genome. By binding to DNA, they help turn genes 'on' or 'off' and start the important process of copying DNA into an RNA template that acts as a blueprint ...

How human brain development diverged from great apes

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel, and ETH Zurich, Switzerland, have presented new insights into the development ...

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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.

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