[apbio] unit 6

silent mutation

a change in usually one amino acid that doesn’t (usually) change anything

missense mutation

a change in one amino acid that changes EVERYTHING!!!

nonsense mutation

early stop

frameshift mutation

everything changes

role of RNA

key player in protein synthesis and the regulation of gene expression

purines

adenine, guanine

pyrimidines

cytosine, thymine, uracil

transcription

RNA synthesized from DNA

translation

protein synthesized from RNA

central dogma

basic flow of information in a cell

gene regulation

various ways where cells control gene expression

noncoding RNA’s

stretch of DNA transcribed to RNA, but the RNA isn’t transcribed into a protein

replication forks

the site where parental DNA strands separate as it unwinds

initiation

RNA poly. and other proteins bind DNA, DNA is seperated, transcription begins

elongation

nucleotides added to the 3’ end of a growing RNA transcript, RNA poly goes along the template strand

termination

RNA poly. finds a stop codon!!! RNa transcript is released

promoters

regulatory region where RNA poly. + proteins bind to the DNA molecule in transcription

mRNA

RNA molecule that combines with a ribosome to direct protein synthesis
genetic message from DNA to the ribosome

exons

are beloved and kept after RNA splicing

introns

hated and removed during RNA splicing

alternative splicing

one gene produces many mRNA transcripts

polymerase chain reaction

selective and sensitive method of making copies of a piece of DNA

denaturation

heating the solution so the hydrogen bonds break btwn complementary bases

annealing

solution cools, two primers bind to their complementray sequence on the DNA

extension

solution is heated to the optimal temp for elongation of each primer

DNA sequencing

a technique thats used to figure out the order of nucleotides in DNA