The question “What is a gene?” has bothered geneticists for fifty years. Recent work with a small bacterial virus has shown how to split the gene and make detailed maps of its internal structure ...

despite an awareness that the scope and complexity of the task defy a fully systematic approach. Speakers agreed that examining the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of gene products is a promising ...

What have we learned about RNA structure and function so far ... Prokaryotic organisms contain one type of rRNA gene that encodes three distinct RNA species: the 23S, 5S, and 16S rRNAs.

In fact, each gene in cellular DNA contains the code for a unique protein structure. Not only are these proteins assembled with different amino acid sequences, but they also are held together by ...

Two new studies show how a seeming tangle of DNA is actually organized into a structure that coordinates thousands of genes to form a sperm cell. The work, published as two papers in Nature Structural ...

The next step was to find out its structure, in order to understand how the gene, the basic unit of heredity, works and how it is passed from one generation to the next. Crick and Watson were ...

Epigenetics is the study of various heritable alterations that control gene expression without changing the DNA sequence. 1 The name epigenetics comes from the Greek prefix “epi”, which means on top ...

It carries the genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth, and reproduction of all known organisms and many viruses. DNA is a complex molecule that consists of two strands coiled ...