Team finds that some cells activate only one of their two
gene copies during development, altering protein yields and raising new questions...
Not exact matches
During reproduction, humans inherit two working
copies of most
genes — one
copy, or allele, from each parent.
They made these clones by a process called automatic parthenogenesis: The egg is formed normally (with half the species» usual number of chromosomes), then fertilized by the «polar body,» a cell that is created
during oogenesis and contains the same
gene copies as the egg, resulting in the shark having half the genetic variation of its mother.
And the changes are handed down: While most of the chimp genome's 24 pairs of chromosomes undergo a genetic reshuffling
during the production of sperm and eggs, with
genes swapped between the two
copies, there is only one Y chromosome and thus no mixing — the Y is transmitted intact.
During maturation, her eggs all started out with four
copies of the
gene: two normal and two flawed.
Because people with trisomy 21 possess an additional
copy of this
gene, the oversupply may hinder the establishment of correct connections among brain cells
during fetal development.
During this crucial step, messenger RNA (mRNA), which is a RNA
copy of a
gene's recipe for a protein, is translated by the cell's ribosome into the sequence of amino acids that will make up a newly synthesized protein.
In particular, they examined what happens
during gene expression — when
genes copy data from DNA to RNA in order to create proteins.
But the researchers also put a
copy of the Myd88
gene near a special «promoter» sequence of DNA that gets switched on
during early embryonic development.
Edits and transgenes could mutate
during or after the spread to fixation, though subsequent
gene drive releases could periodically overwrite the mutated versions with a new
copy.