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Related Concept Videos

Ribosome Profiling02:24

Ribosome Profiling

Ribosome profiling or ribo-sequencing is a deep sequencing technique that produces a snapshot of active translation in a cell. It selectively sequences the mRNAs protected by ribosomes to get an insight into a cell’s translation landscape at any given point in time.
Applications of ribosome profiling
Ribosome profiling has many applications, including in vivo monitoring of translation inside a particular organ or tissue type and quantifying new protein synthesis levels.
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Proteomics01:33

Proteomics

A proteome is the entire set of proteins that a cell type produces. We can study proteomes using the knowledge of genomes because genes code for mRNAs, and the mRNAs encode proteins. Although mRNA analysis is a step in the right direction, not all mRNAs are translated into proteins.
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A gene is a stretch of DNA that serves as the blueprint for functional RNAs and proteins. Since DNA is comprised  of nucleotides and proteins are comprised of amino acids, a mediator is required to convert the information encoded in DNA into proteins. This mediator is the messenger RNA (mRNA). mRNA copies the blueprint from DNA by a process called transcription. In eukaryotes, transcription occurs in the nucleus by complementary base-pairing with the DNA template. The mRNA is then processed and...
What is Gene Expression?01:42

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A gene is the fundamental unit of heredity. Every individual has two copies of each gene, one inherited from each parent. Although most people contain the same genes, there is a small fraction that is slightly different amongst people. A gene with a small difference in its sequence of DNA bases forms different alleles, contributing to different phenotypes.
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Processing of Primary Brain Tumor Tissue for Stem Cell Assays and Flow Sorting
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Stochastic gene expression: from single molecules to the proteome.

Benjamin B Kaufmann1, Alexander van Oudenaarden

  • 1Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Current Opinion in Genetics & Development
|February 24, 2007
PubMed
Summary

Cellular protein levels vary due to random gene expression. Bursts of mRNA production, not just random degradation, significantly contribute to this protein number variation, especially for nearby genes.

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Proteome-wide Quantification of Labeling Homogeneity at the Single Molecule Level
08:29

Proteome-wide Quantification of Labeling Homogeneity at the Single Molecule Level

Published on: April 19, 2019

Area of Science:

  • Molecular Biology
  • Systems Biology
  • Biophysics

Background:

  • Protein production is a stochastic process, leading to cell-to-cell variability in protein copy numbers.
  • A linear relationship between variance and mean expression is observed for many proteins.
  • Existing models often attribute this variability solely to mRNA production and degradation randomness.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the underlying causes of protein number variation within isogenic cell populations.
  • To evaluate the contribution of infrequent gene activation events to proteome variability.
  • To explore the role of mRNA bursting in protein expression noise.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of large-scale proteomic data to measure protein expression variation.
  • Single-molecule experiments to observe mRNA production dynamics.
  • Correlation analysis of temporal patterns in mRNA bursts for adjacent genes.

Main Results:

  • A linear relationship between protein expression variance and mean is confirmed across a large portion of the proteome.
  • Evidence suggests infrequent gene activation events, characterized by mRNA bursting, are a significant source of variability.
  • Correlated temporal patterns of mRNA bursts were observed for chromosomally proximal genes.

Conclusions:

  • Protein number variability arises from both random mRNA dynamics and infrequent gene activation events.
  • mRNA bursting plays a critical role in generating noise in protein production.
  • Coordinated gene activation of proximal genes may be regulated by an upstream factor.