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Terms

Antigenic variation

Antigenic variation is the mechanism of changing immunogenic signatures to avoid immune recognition

Craig, A. and Scherf, A.. 2003. Antigenic Variation. Academic Press, Amsterdam

Crossing-over

Crossing-over describes the reciprocal exchange of material between chromosomes that occurs during prophase I of meiosis and is reponsible for genetic recombination.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 985)

Gene conversion

Gene conversion is the alteration of one of the strands of a heteroduplex DNA to make it complementary with the other strand at any position(s) where there were mispaired bases.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 985)

Gene family

A gene family consists of a set of genes whose exons are related; the members were derived by duplication and variation from some ancestral gene.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 988)

Processed pseudogene

A processed pseudogene is an inactive gene copy that lacks introns, contrasted with the interrupted structure of the active gene. Such genes originate by reverse transcription of mRNA and insertion of a duplex copy into the genome.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 996)

Promoter

A promoter is a region of DNA where RNA polymerase binds to initiate transcription.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 996)

Pseudogene

Pseudogenes are inactive but stable components of the genome derived by maturation of an ancestral active gene. Usually they are inactive because of mutations that block transcription or translation or both.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 996)

Retroposon

A retroposon or retrotransposon is a transposon that mobilizes via an RNA form; the DNA element is transcribed into RNA, and then reverse-transcribed into DNA, which is inserted into a new site in the genome. The difference from retroviruses is that the retroposon does not have an infective (viral) form.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 997)

Transposon

A transposon or transposable element is a DNA sequence able to insert itself at a new location in the genome, without having any sequence relationship with the target locus.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 1002)

Unequal crossing-over

Unequal crossing-over describes a recombination event in which the two recombination sites lie at nonidentical locations in the two parental DNA molecules.

Lewin, B.. 2004. Genes VIII. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (pp. 1002)


Bioinformatics Center, Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan
System last updated Fri, August 29, 2008 17:43:09 JST / SVN revision: 413