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Biotechnology
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Cell & Microbiology
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Biotechnology
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Molecular & Computational biology
Jul 14, 2020
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4251
A diverse set of species, from snails to algae to amoebas, make programmable DNA-cutting enzymes called Fanzors—and a new study from scientists at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research has identified thousands of ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Oct 13, 2023
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6178
Think your DNA is all human? Think again. And a new discovery suggests it's even less human than scientists previously thought.
Biotechnology
Mar 22, 2016
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In the early 1960s, University of Michigan alumnus Marshall Nirenberg and a few other scientists deciphered the genetic code of life, determining the rules by which information in DNA molecules is translated into proteins, ...
Evolution
Jun 8, 2022
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421
The Americas were the last continent to be inhabited by humans. An increasing body of archaeological and genomic evidence has hinted to a complex settlement process. This is especially true for South America, where unexpected ...
Archaeology
Nov 1, 2022
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907
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Evolution
Jul 13, 2020
0
627
CRISPR-Cas9 is the go-to technique for knocking out genes in human cell lines to discover what the genes do, but the efficiency with which it disables genes can vary immensely.
Biotechnology
Aug 17, 2016
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172
A DNA sequence or genetic sequence is a succession of letters representing the primary structure of a real or hypothetical DNA molecule or strand, with the capacity to carry information as described by the central dogma of molecular biology.
The possible letters are A, C, G, and T, representing the four nucleotide bases of a DNA strand — adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine — covalently linked to a phosphodiester backbone. In the typical case, the sequences are printed abutting one another without gaps, as in the sequence AAAGTCTGAC, read left to right in the 5' to 3' direction. Short sequences of nucleotides are referred to as oligonucleotides and are used in a range of laboratory applications in molecular biology. With regard to biological function, a DNA sequence may be considered sense or antisense, and either coding or noncoding. DNA sequences can also contain "junk DNA."
Sequences can be derived from the biological raw material through a process called DNA sequencing.
In some special cases, letters besides A, T, C, and G are present in a sequence. These letters represent ambiguity. Of all the molecules sampled, there is more than one kind of nucleotide at that position. The rules of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) are as follows:
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