Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

The former standing U.S. national committee set up in 1974 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advise the NIH director on matters regarding policy and safety issues of recombinant DNA research and development. Over time, it had evolved to become part of the American government’s regulatory process for recombinant DNA research and product…

Discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 1860s, this refers to an allelic gene whose existence is obscured in the phenotype of a heterozygote by the dominant allele. In a heterozygote the recessive allele does not produce a polypeptide; it is switched off. In this case the dominant allele is the one producing the polypeptide chain.…

Functional proteinaceous structures typically found in the membrane (surface) of cells that tightly bind specific molecules (organic, proteins or viruses). Some (relatively rare) receptors are located inside the cell’s membrane (e.g., free-floating receptor for Retin-A). Both (membrane, internal) types of receptors are a functional part of information transmission to the cell. A general overview is…

A method used to guess at (determine) the three-dimensional structure of a receptor binding site extrapolating from the known structure of the molecule binding to it. This approach can be carried out because of the complementary shape of the receptor and the binding molecule. Functionally, the researcher projects the (guessed-at) properties of the receptor ligands…

A research method used to determine the macromolecular structure that a chemical compound (e.g., an inhibitor) must have in order to fit (in a lock-and-key fashion) into a receptor. For example, a pain inhibitor compound blocking a pain receptor on the surface of a cell.  

The product of the RecA locus (in a gene of) Escherichia coli. It is a protein with dual activities, acting as a protease and also able to exchange single strands of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules. The protease activity controls the SOS response. The nucleic acid handling facility (i.e., ability to exchange single strands of DNA)…

The pairing of complementary single strands (of the molecule) to form a double helix (structure).  

The particular nucleotide sequence that starts at a specific point and is then partitioned into codons. The reading frame may be shifted by removing or adding a nucleotide(s). This would cause a new sequence of codons to be read. For example, the sequence CATGGT is normally read as the two codons: CAT and GGT. If…

The engineering (building) of chemically synthesized drugs based on knowledge of receptor modeling and drug/target interaction with the aid of supercomputers/interactive graphics/etc); the educated, creative design of the three-dimensional structure of a drug atom by atom, that is, “from the ground up.” This approach represents a major advance over the prior practice of first synthesizing…

A transmembrane (i.e., through the cell membrane) protein that is coded for by the ras gene. The ras protein end that is outside the cell membrane acts as a receptor for applicable growth factors (e.g., fibroblast growth factor), and conveys that signal (i.e., to divide/grow) into the cell when that chemical signal (i.e., the growth…