Tagged Questions
2
votes
2answers
94 views
Prenatal Marketing
This is for a short story idea.
Is it possible to modify the DNA of a child to make their metabolism more susceptible (physical response, addiction, etc) to a certain type of chemical i.e. a chemical ...
3
votes
1answer
42 views
mutant down but not out
I am interested in a gene which is null lethal but I need to temporary induce diminished capacity. If a cell is homozygous is it possible to induce heterozygous phenotypes or a partial knockout from ...
11
votes
1answer
131 views
Can DNA act as a translation substrate?
I get conflicting answers. One would think if it was true, it would be rather seminal and widely known.
There are papers from Khorana[1], Holland[2], and Bretscher[3] (late 60s) that suggest that it ...
4
votes
1answer
136 views
How are DNA polymerase error rates measured?
It is well known that the first DNA polymerase, Taq, is quite error prone. Newer generation commercial enzymes that have either been isolated from different thermophile species or have been improved ...
5
votes
2answers
447 views
Why do DNA and RNA have the functions they have?
I know that there are two most important directions of genetic information transfer in living organisms: DNA->DNA and DNA->RNA. The first is replication, and the second is transcription. I wonder if ...
7
votes
1answer
65 views
How do nuclear receptors locate each other to form a DNA loop?
Nuclear receptors can influence transcription far up- or downstream from their own binding sites by looping DNA (Rubina et al.; J Mol Bio 2004).
I am not sure how exactly the receptors first attach ...
2
votes
2answers
68 views
Consensus codon optimization by organism
Does a public database exist that contains this information? I'm trying to make a simple gene annotation program that will let me input a DNA sequence and then optimize it based on one of these tables ...
22
votes
3answers
2k views
Why do eukaryotic organisms have introns in their DNA?
We touched on introns and exons in my bio class, but unfortunately we didn't really talk about why Eukaryotes have introns. It would seem they would have to have some purpose since prokaryotes do not ...
6
votes
1answer
116 views
What is the origin of “melting” in molecular genetics?
I'm reading some papers about prokaryotic transcription mechanisms, and I've come across a term I haven't heard before: DNA melting or promoter melting. After reading a bit, it's pretty clear that ...
