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Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines biology, computer science, information engineering, mathematics and statistics to analyze and interpret the biological data. Bioinformatics has been used for in silico analyses of biological queries using mathematical and statistical techniques.
The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material into proteins. Translation is accomplished by the ribosome, which links proteinogenic amino acids in an order specified by messenger RNA (mRNA), using transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to carry amino acids and to read the mRNA three nucleotides at a time. The genetic code is highly similar among all organisms and can be expressed in a simple table with 64 entries.
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA. The genome includes both the genes and the noncoding DNA, as well as mitochondrial DNA and chloroplast DNA. The study of the genome is called genomics. The genome for several organisms have been sequenced and genes analyzed, the human genome project which sequenced the entire genome for Homo sapiens was successfully completed in April 2003.
The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as DNA within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria. These are usually treated separately as the nuclear genome and the mitochondrial genome. Human genomes include both protein-coding DNA genes and noncoding DNA. Haploid human genomes, which are contained in germ cells consist of three billion DNA base pairs, while diploid genomes have twice the DNA content. While there are significant differences among the genomes of human individuals, these are considerably smaller than the differences between humans and their closest living relatives, the bonobos and chimpanzees.
Non-coding DNA sequences are components of an organism's DNA that do not encode protein sequences. Some non-coding DNA is transcribed into functional non-coding RNA molecules. Other functions of non-coding DNA include the transcriptional and translational regulation of protein-coding sequences, scaffold attachment regions, origins of DNA replication, centromeres and telomeres. Its RNA counterpart is non-coding RNA.
In biology, epigenetics is the study of heritable phenotype changes that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix epi- in epigenetics implies features that are "on top of" or "in addition to" the traditional genetic basis for inheritance. Epigenetics most often involves changes that affect gene activity and expression, but the term can also be used to describe any heritable phenotypic change. Such effects on cellular and physiological phenotypic traits may result from external or environmental factors, or be part of normal development.
Pseudogenes are nonfunctional segments of DNA that resemble functional genes. Most arise as superfluous copies of functional genes, either directly by DNA duplication or indirectly by reverse transcription of an mRNA transcript. Pseudogenes are usually identified when genome sequence analysis finds gene-like sequences that lack regulatory sequences needed for transcription or translation, or whose coding sequences are obviously defective due to frameshifts or premature stop codons.
Molecular genetics is a sub-field of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the structure and/or function of genes in an organism's genome using genetic screens. The field of study is based on the merging of several sub-fields in biology: classical Mendelian inheritance, cellular biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and biotechnology. Researchers search for mutations in a gene or induce mutations in a gene to link a gene sequence to a specific phenotype. Molecular genetics is a powerful methodology for linking mutations to genetic conditions that may aid the search for treatments/cures for various genetics diseases.
In molecular biology and genetics, transcriptional regulation is the means by which a cell regulates the conversion of DNA to RNA (transcription), thereby orchestrating gene activity. A single gene can be regulated in a range of ways, from altering the number of copies of RNA that are transcribed, to the temporal control of when the gene is transcribed. This control allows the cell or organism to respond to a variety of intra- and extracellular signals and thus mount a response. Some examples of this include producing the mRNA that encode enzymes to adapt to a change in a food source, producing the gene products involved in cell cycle specific activities, and producing the gene products responsible for cellular differentiation in multicellular eukaryotes, as studied in evolutionary developmental biology.
In biology, a gene is a basic unit of heredity and a sequence of nucleotides in DNA or RNA that encodes the synthesis of a gene product, either RNA or protein.
Non-cellular life, or acellular life is life that exists without a cellular structure for at least part of its life cycle. Historically, most (descriptive) definitions of life postulated that a living organism must be composed of one or more cells, but this is no longer considered necessary, and modern criteria allow for forms of life based on other structural arrangements.
Maxine Frank Singer is an American molecular biologist and science administrator. She is known for her contributions to solving the genetic code, her role in the ethical and regulatory debates on recombinant DNA techniques, and her leadership of Carnegie Institution of Washington. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.
Steven Scott Gubser was a professor of physics at Princeton University. His research focused on theoretical particle physics, especially string theory, and the AdS/CFT correspondence. He was a widely cited scholar in these and other related areas.
The NAS Award in Molecular Biology is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for recent notable discovery in molecular biology by a young scientist who is a citizen of the United States." It has been awarded annually since its inception in 1962.
A codon table can be used to translate a genetic code into a sequence of amino acids. The standard genetic code is traditionally represented as an RNA codon table, because when proteins are made in a cell by ribosomes, it is messenger RNA (mRNA) that directs protein synthesis. The mRNA sequence is determined by the sequence of genomic DNA. In this context, the standard genetic code is referred to as translation table 1. It can also be represented in a DNA codon table. The DNA codons in such tables occur on the sense DNA strand and are arranged in a 5′-to-3′ direction. Different tables with alternate codons are used depending on the source of the genetic code, such as from a cell nucleus, mitochondrion, plastid, or hydrogenosome.
Lila Kari is a Romanian and Canadian computer scientist, professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Jennifer Anne Doudna is an American biochemist who has done pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, and made other fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics. She received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with Emmanuelle Charpentier, "for the development of a method for genome editing." She is the Li Ka Shing Chancellor's Chair Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997.
Sterkiella histriomuscorum, formerly Oxytricha trifallax, is a ciliate species in the genus Sterkiella, known for its highly fragmented genomes which have been used as a model for ciliate genetics.
The genome of most cells of eukaryotes remains mainly constant during life. However, there are cases of genome being altered in specific cells or in different life cycle stages during development. For example, not every human cell has the same genetic content as red blood cells which are devoid of nucleus. One of the best known groups in respect of changes in somatic genome are ciliates. The process resulting in a variation of somatic genome that differs from germline genome is called somatic genome processing.
Anne Carla Ferguson-Smith is a mammalian developmental geneticist. She is the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics, Head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.
References
- 1 2 3 4 McClain, Dylan Loeb (September 6, 2019). "Steven Gubser, a Bright Star in the Physics Universe, Dies at 47". The New York Times . Retrieved September 7, 2019.
- 1 2 3 "Laura Landweber" (PDF). Princeton University. January 19, 2016. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
- ↑ Hopkin, Karen (November 1, 2006). "The Fast Track to Success". The Scientist.
- 1 2 Knight, Robin D; Landweber, Laura F (June 2000). "The Early Evolution of the Genetic Code". Cell. 101 (6): 569–572. doi: 10.1016/S0092-8674(00)80866-1 . PMID 10892641.
- ↑ Landweber, LF (October 19, 2007). "Genetics. Why genomes in pieces?". Science. 318 (5849): 405–7. doi:10.1126/science.1150280. PMID 17947572.
- ↑ Nowacki, M; Vijayan, V; Zhou, Y; Schotanus, K; Doak, TG; Landweber, LF (January 10, 2008). "RNA-mediated epigenetic programming of a genome-rearrangement pathway". Nature. 451 (7175): 153–8. Bibcode:2008Natur.451..153N. doi:10.1038/nature06452. PMC 2647009 . PMID 18046331.
- ↑ "The Landweber Lab: Publications". Princeton University. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
- ↑ "Laura F. Landweber". Sigma Xi. Retrieved November 27, 2015.
- ↑ "List of Award Winners". International Conference on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
- ↑ "AAAS Fellows". AAAS. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
- ↑ "Laura Landweber". Blavatnik Awards. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
- ↑ "Laura Landweber". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
- ↑ Jeffries, Abigail (2008). "Ingenious, Innovative, and Interdisciplinary!". The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine. No. 2, Autumn 2008. pp. 11–18. Retrieved September 7, 2019.
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