When it comes to our differences from Neanderthals, most of what we know comes from comparing fossils. But fossils can only tell us about bones and not whole living organisms.
Evolution
Oct 08, 2019
2
1029
Humans have been eating peaches and almonds for thousands of years. Although at first sight the products of these trees may seem to be very different, both species are part of the Prunus genus, and are genetically very similar—so ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 26, 2019
0
4
The interior of a human cell consists, in part, of a complex soup of millions of molecules.
Biochemistry
Aug 21, 2019
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96
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have uncovered the genetics behind two distinct types of olfactory sensory neurons; the so-called class I olfactory neurons, conserved from aquatic to terrestrial animals, ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 19, 2019
0
60
Most multicellular organisms on Earth—including you—begin as a single fertilized egg and then undergo a complex choreography of cellular growth to become a functioning adult composed of countless cells. Understanding ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Aug 02, 2019
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55
A study headed by the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and published in the journal CHEM furthers the understanding of the asymmetry between nucleic acid hybrids. This advance may make a significant contribution ...
Biochemistry
Jun 13, 2019
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4
IMP scientists from the lab of Alexander Stark show why certain activators—enhancers or cofactor proteins—activate specific promoters. The findings, which are now reported in the journal Nature, could have implications ...
Biotechnology
May 16, 2019
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82
How, where and when genes are expressed determine individual phenotypes. If gene expression is controlled by many regulatory elements, what, ultimately, controls them? And how does genetic variation affect them? The SysGenetiX ...
Molecular & Computational biology
May 02, 2019
0
91
A Belgian team of computational biologists led by Stein Aerts (VIB-KU Leuven) has developed a new bioinformatics method called cisTopic. Inspired by text-mining methods, cisTopic helps scientists to gain insight into the ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Apr 09, 2019
0
5
Lil BUB has drawn millions of followers across the internet for her cute appearance. Behind the celebrity cat's unique features is a combination of two rare genetic variants, three molecular biologists from Germany and the ...
Biotechnology
Mar 06, 2019
0
100
Gene modulation redirects here. For information on therapeutic regulation of gene expression, see therapeutic gene modulation.
Regulation of gene expression (or gene regulation) includes the processes that cells and viruses use to turn the information in genes into gene products. Although a functional gene product may be an RNA or a protein, the majority of known mechanisms regulate protein coding genes. Any step of the gene's expression may be modulated, from DNA-RNA transcription to the post-translational modification of a protein.
Gene regulation is essential for viruses, prokaryotes and eukaryotes as it increases the versatility and adaptability of an organism by allowing the cell to express protein when needed. The first discovered example of a gene regulation system was the lac operon, discovered by Jacques Monod, in which protein involved in lactose metabolism are expressed by E.coli only in the presence of lactose and absence of glucose.
Furthermore, gene regulation drives the processes of cellular differentiation and morphogenesis, leading to the creation of different cell types in multicellular organisms where the different types of cells may possess different gene expression profiles though they all possess the same genome sequence.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
