Imagine being one cartwheel away from changing your appearance. One flip, and your brunette locks are platinum blond. That's not too far from what happens in some prokaryotes, or single-cell organisms, such as bacteria, that undergo something called inversions.
Imagine being one cartwheel away from changing your appearance. One flip, and your brunette locks are platinum blond. That's not too far from what happens in some prokaryotes, or single-cell organisms, such as bacteria, that undergo something called inversions.
"Bacteria are even cooler than I originally thought, and I'm a microbiologist, so I already thought they were pretty cool," said Rachael Chanin, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in hematology. Microbiologists have known for decades that bacteria can flip small sections of their DNA to activate or deactivate genes, Chanin said. To the team's knowledge, however, those somersaulting pieces have never been found within the confines of a single gene.
Microbiologists have since found inversions occurring in small DNA segments of various kinds of prokaryotes. But Bhatt and her team wondered if they could also happen within a single gene. West created an algorithm, called PhaVa, that identified possible inversions within bacterial genomes. "That's a to-do now," Bhatt said."One of our next steps is to try to decode the molecular grammar so we can build a database of enzymes and a database of the inverted repeats that they flip."While there's still much more to understand about inversions, Bhatt sees potential for numerous applications."This is effectively a heritable, reversible type of genetic regulation," she said.
Microbiology Biotechnology And Bioengineering Microbes And More Life Sciences Genetics Biochemistry Research CRISPR Gene Editing
Nigeria Latest News, Nigeria Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Putin Issues Nuclear Power Plant Strike Warning: 'One Can Only Imagine''One can only imagine what will happen if we strike back; what will happen in Europe,' Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
Read more »
Bacterial 'flipping' allows genes to assume different formsImagine being one cartwheel away from changing your appearance. One flip, and your brunette locks are platinum blond. That's not too far from what happens in some prokaryotes, or single-cell organisms, such as bacteria, that undergo something called inversions.
Read more »
Misdiagnosed Friends: One Survived, One Didn't'My diagnosis wasn’t a death sentence, but it felt like one. I was in constant, agonizing pain, and the treatments still weren’t helping.'
Read more »
Preston Lord's parents sit down with ABC15 in first one-on-one interviewAshley Holden is excited to be part of the A-Team!
Read more »
If you have to watch one Disney+ movie this September, stream this oneDT Video
Read more »
Scientists identify a unique combination of bacterial strains that could treat antibiotic-resistant gut infectionsResearchers have isolated 18 bacterial strains from stool from healthy people that could potentially be a more effective treatment for antibiotic-resistant gut infections.
Read more »