Molecular Biology

What are microRNAs? MicroRNA is a class of post-transcriptional regulators. They are short ~22 nucleotide RNA sequences that bind to complementary sequences in the 3’ UTR of multiple target mRNAs, usually resulting in their silencing. MicroRNAs target ~60% of all genes, are abundantly present in all human cells, and are …

A fundamental property of living organisms is their ability to reproduce. Bacteria and fungi can divide to produce daughter cells that are identical to the parental cells. Sexually reproducing organisms produce offspring that are similar to themselves. This article covers the Enzymes Involved in DNA Replication.  On a cellular level, this …

The first postulate the central dogma, experimentally proved and is that the DNA is capable of self-replication. This was immediately deduced by Watson and Crick that each DNA strand uniquely specifies its complement, but it took longer for the details of the mechanism are elucidated. The first question was that of …

DNA replication is, by far, the most accurate of known enzyme-catalyzed processes. The error rate per base pair per round of replication is about 10-9 to 10-10. The accuracy cannot be explained, however, by the different binding energies between correct and incorrect base pairs (this amounts to only a 100 …

What is Gene Expression? What is Lac Operon? Definition of Gene Regulation is “the control of gene regulation and expression is very well understood in prokaryotes. The switching on and off of the gene to regulate the synthesis of various proteins (the enzymes, for example) is essential. The fluctuation in the immediate …

What is DNA Damage Response? When Watson and Crick described the double helix structure of DNA and proposed its semi-conservative replication based on specific base pairings to explain the faithful transmission of genetic information from generation to generation mechanism to explain spontaneous mutations. Watson and Crick pointed out that the …