Woojae/Woojae's Encyclopedia

A

Alignment

Arranging the sequences of DNA, RNA, or protein to identify similarities

 

B

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data.

As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines computer science, statistics, mathematics, and engineering to analyze and interpret biological data.

Biophysics

Biophysics or biological physics is an interdisciplinary science that applies the approaches and methods of physics to study biological systems.

Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. 

 

C

Chaperone

In molecular biology, molecular chaperones are proteins that assist the covalent folding or unfolrding and the assembly or disassembly of other macromolecular structures.

 

D

Differentiation

The process where a cell changes from one cell type to another(more specialized)

 

E

Encode

Change a information into a code.

Epigenetic

The study of stable heritable changes in gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence. (Changes in phenotype by environment)

Epistasis

The phenomenon where the effect of one gene(locus) is dependent on the presence of one or more 'modifier genes', the genetic background.

 

 

G

Gene Annotation

The process of identifying the locations of genes and all of the coding regions in a genome and determining what those genes do.

Gene expression

The process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product. These products are often proteins, but in non-protein coding genes such as transfer RNA or small nuclear RNA genes, the products is a functional RNA.

Genetic marker

A gene or DNA sequence with a known location on a chromosome that can be used to identify individuals or species.

Genomic

Genomics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of genes, which direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules.

Genomics also involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes.

H

Histone

Histones are highly alkaline proteins found in eukaryotic cell nuclei that package and order the DNA into structural units called nucleosomes.

Homology

The existence of shared ancestry between a pair of structures, or genes, in different taxa.

 

I

Inflammation

Inflammation is part of the complex biological response of body tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants and is a protective response involving immune cells, blood vessels, and molecular mediators.

 

 

 

L

Locus

A fixed position on a chromosome, like the position of a gene or a marker(genetic marker)

 

M

Metagenomics

The study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples.

Modifier genes

A gene that alters the phenotypic expression of another gene

Mutation

The permanent alteration of the nucleotide sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA or other genetic elements.

 

N

Neurodegenerative

The progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, including death of neurons.

O

Open reading frame

The part of a reading frame that has the potential to be translated.

An ORF is a continuous stretch of codons that contain a start codon(usually AUG) and a stop codon(usually UAA, UAG or UGA).

 

Orthologous

Homologous sequences are orthologous if they are inferred to be descended from the same ancestral sequence separated by a speciation event: when a species diverges into two separate species, the copies of a single gene in the two resulting species are said to be orthologous.

 

P

Paralogous

Homologous sequences are paralogous if they were created by a duplication event within the genome. For gene duplication events, if a gene in an organism is duplicated to occupy two different positions in the same genome, then the two copies are paralogous.

Personalized medicine

Personalized medicine also termed precision medicine, is a medical procedure that separates patients into different groups—with medical decisions, practices, interventions and/or products being tailored to the individual patient based on their predicted response or risk of disease

Phylogenetic tree

A phylogenetic tree or evolutionary tree is a branching diagram or "tree" showing the inferred evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities—their phylogeny—based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics.

 

Q

Query

 A query is a form of questioning, in a line of inquiry

 

R

Replication fork

An Y shaped structure that forms within the nucleus during DNA replication. It is created by helicases, which break the hydrogen bonds holding the two DNA strands together.

 

S

Sequence assembly

It refers to aligning and merging fragments from a longer DNA sequence in order to reconstruct the original sequence.

 

Sequencing

The process of determining the nucloetide order of a given DNA fragment.

 

T

Topology

Topology is concerned with the properties of space that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, crumpling and bending, but not tearing or gluing.

Taxa

It is a plural of taxon. Taxon is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit.

 

 

V

Variation

Genetic variation means that biological systems – individuals and populations – are different over space.

Each gene pool includes various alleles of genes. The variation occurs both within and among populations, supported by individual carriers of the variant genes.