Hot answers tagged terminology
15
I found this post by Russ Altman quite good. Below is his opinion about the two similar but distinct fields:
Computational biology: the study of biology using computational
techniques. The goal is to learn new biology, knowledge about living
sytems. It is about science.
Bioinformatics: the creation of tools (algorithms, databases) that
...
13
When dealing with humans, there are only two Biological genders as defined by the presence or absence of the Y-Chromosome. If the Y-Chromosome is not present, or through some process gets totally deactivated, the human will appear and function as a Female.
XX = Female
XY = Male
XXY = Male (Klinefelter's Syndrome)
XYY = Male (Aneuploidy - Normal ...
9
I think this question is on topic here, although yes you would definitely get a lot of answers at BioStars. But consider this from the bioinformatics tag wiki on this site.
Bioinformatics is a broad field that interfaces a variety of life
science disciplines (biology, genetics, biochemistry, biophysics, etc)
with a variety of quantitative sciences ...
8
Bioavailability is a concept which applies to nutrients and drugs which pass through first-pass metabolism, i.e. orally (and to some extent nasally) consumed substances. Anything absorbed in the gut first passes through the liver before reaching the rest of the circulation, and both the gut and liver may metabolise it to some extent. The liver in specific ...
5
Aside from the actual microbial cells themselves, biofilms are a slime matrix made of a variety of substances, including DNA, lipids, proteins, and other signaling molecules, but the major component is something called extracellular polymeric substance (EPS), also known as exopolysaccharides.
Succinoglycan from Sinorhizobium meliloti
These are high ...
5
It seems to me that the difference is mainly semantic, although the aims of synthetic biology are undoubtedly more ambitious than those of genetic engineering in, say, the 80s and 90s.
The Wikipedia page on genetic engineering has this definition of the difference:
Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline that takes genetic engineering a step ...
5
I'm actually not sure myself. If I were to use something, I would go with "Mitos'd" and "Meios'd".
However, you may not win over many fans, depending on the audience. If it's with students or maybe a professor, you could get away with shortening the processes. If it's in any formal setting, be as precise and descriptive as possible. It's not a lot of ...
4
I think you might be confusing sex and gender. The terms are often used interchangeably, but strictly speaking, they have different biological meanings. Sex refers to the biological categorization based on genetics, reproductive organs, or similar things, whereas gender is based on social identity.
For humans, there are only two sex chromosomes, X and Y, ...
4
The figure of 350 - 600 Units per mg refers to the specific activity of the enzyme.
The Unit is International Unit or IU and is usually defined as that amount of enzyme that will catalyze the transformation of 1 micromole of substrate (or product) per min, under defined assay conditions (such as pH, temperature, substrate concentration, presence of Mg++, ...
4
From the page linked from your link:
Unit Definition
One unit will convert 1.0 μmole of phospho(enol)pyruvate to pyruvate
per min at pH 7.6 at 37 °C.
So, the unit is defined by activity, and there is no way to know how many molecules or milligrams of protein are included
4
My understanding is that synthetic biology is genetic engineering 2.0. The difference is in the approach. Whereas genetic engineering projects are usually ad hoc, synthetic biology aims to apply proper engineering principles such as standardisation, modularisation, and reusability. Synthetic biologists create and use libraries of standard parts that are ...
4
Bacterial biofilms are a bunch of bacteria that have attached themselves to a surface or to each other as a floating mat to form a solid phase community. Its not seen in the lab so much, but they are common in nature.
The bacteria not only adhere to the surface, but each other through a matrix of polymers they secrete.
The bacteria in a biofilm are ...
3
(Reposting my comment as an answer since it seems to be what was required.)
A DNA molecule that replicates independently of chromosomal DNA is an episome. By this definition a plasmid is (usually) an episome. If a plasmid integrates into a chromosome by some mechanism (as for example in Hfr strains of E. coli where the F plasmid is integrated) the plasmid ...
3
They seem to be practically the same, with the exception of the goals. Genetic Engineering is the direct modification of the genes of an organism which results in capabilities being added or taken away. Synthetic Biology aims to modify the behaviors of an organism or integrate the behaviors of multiple organisms into a singular whole.
As is explained in ...
3
A copy number variation (CNV) is when the number of copies of a particular gene varies from one individual to the next.
From: the NIH Glossary
Focal CNVs are regions of repeated genetic information that only span a small proportion (<25%) of the chromosome arm (although this does not seem to be a consistent rule), and can contain few genes. ...
3
I agree with Terdon's terminology in the comment ("ubiquitous" or "widespread").
You can use clade-specific or species-specific for a restricted character.
For the characters that appear in all species of a branch and in a quantitative way you can also provide the estimated age of the last common ancestor to the branch featuring that character. This tool ...
2
The quick answer is that you are misinterpreting ESTs. EST stands for Expressed Sequence Tag. They are obtained by collecting and sequencing any mature (i.e. poly-A) mRNAs found in a living cell. Well, it was living until the experiment was performed at any rate :).
The term EST is not applicable to sequences derived from genomic data. It only applies to ...
2
Immunopanning is essentially an immunoprecipitation (IP) of cells using an antibody immobilized to a solid surface, like a cell culture plate. Conventionally, an IP is performed using small agarose or magnetic beads (~50 to 150μm in size) conjugated to an antibody or Protein A/G, and can pull down individual proteins, protein complexes, and/or nucleic acid ...
2
Background binding in this case would be the extent to which two proteins associate together by chance.
A hypothetical example: you may have a mitochondrial protein import complex. Usually cases there is a specific peptide sequence the import complex binds to , but proteins without an import peptide sequence will occasionally be bound to the import ...
2
Cytokines is the general class of molecules to which chemokines, interferons, interleukins and others belong. Biologists dispute whether something is a hormone or a cytokine, but generally the consensus goes with if it's to do with immunology it's a cytokine or if the resting concentration is in the picomolar range, but that's a very rough distinction.
...
2
In general:
genetic engineering = cutting and pasting existing DNA extracted from organisms
synthetic biology = chemically synthesizing DNA from scratch, which is used to create new genes and constructs from scratch. The synthetic sequences may not exist or may exist in nature.
2
The "probe by background" interaction is the response of different probes as a function of background gene expression. For example, depending on which of the 6 backgrounds a probe is in, the drug response may go up or down. Probes as a function of background is probably easier to imagine than background as a function of probe (which is equally valid). For ...
1
Dye reduction tests (and there seem to be loads of different ones) are simply assays in which a dye becomes decolourised to give you a visual indication of whether a certain process is occuring. Here you can find an example of a dye reduction test with Methylene Blue and Reazurin which indirectly measures the bacterial densities in milk and cream. See this ...
1
To me, "psychomodulatory" would mean "eliciting a significant change (up or down) relative to baseline or compared to a control, placebo, or carrier," here specifically in CNS function.
This statement appears to refer to the results presented in section 3.8, Effect of euphol in the cannabinoid tetrad tests. Across a range of doses (3-100 mg/kg) and across ...
1
There are >1200 articles tagged "chronic immobilization stress" on pubmed.
From Hennebelle et al. (2012):
Half of the 6-month old male rats from each dietary group were subjected to a validated chronic stress procedure (Buyntsky and Mostosky, 2009) based on a restraint stress procedure adapted from Veena et al, [32]. Rats were placed in wire mesh ...
1
My 2 cents:
To answer your main question:
Is our terminology becoming inconsistent due to the rapid improvements in sequencing technology, or am I missing or misinterpreting something?
I think what you are witnessing (being subject to(?)) is, as you say, an inconsistency of terms due to the rapid improvements in the field.
I put the caveat in that ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
