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Also called functionalism. The Darwinian view that many or most physiological and behavioral traits of organisms are adaptations that have evolved for specific functions or for specific reasons (as opposed to being byproducts of the evolution of other traits, consequences of biological constraints, or the result of random variation). adaptive radiation The simultaneous or near-simultaneous ...
Ab Initio gene prediction is an intrinsic method based on gene content and signal detection. Because of the inherent expense and difficulty in obtaining extrinsic evidence for many genes, it is also necessary to resort to ab initio gene finding, in which the genomic DNA sequence alone is systematically searched for certain tell-tale signs of protein-coding genes.
Gene structure is the organisation of specialised sequence elements within a gene. Genes contain most of the information necessary for living cells to survive and reproduce. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In most organisms, genes are made of DNA, where the particular DNA sequence determines the function of the gene.
The application of physics and chemistry to biological problems led to the development of molecular biology, which is particularly concerned with the flow and consequences of biological information from DNA to proteins. The discovery of the DNA double helix made clear that genes are functionally defined parts of DNA molecules, and that there ...
Pseudogenes are identified by means of a phylogenetic analysis. First, a species tree of the species of interest and a phylogenetic tree of the gene (or gene family) of interest are constructed. The two are then compared to identify a species that has lost the gene.
The field is broadly defined and includes foundations in biology, applied mathematics, statistics, biochemistry, chemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, genetics, genomics, computer science and evolution. Computational biology has become an important part of developing emerging technologies for the field of biology. [3]
In the genomic branch of bioinformatics, homology is used to predict the function of a gene: if the sequence of gene A, whose function is known, is homologous to the sequence of gene B, whose function is unknown, one could infer that B may share A's function. In structural bioinformatics, homology is used to determine which parts of a protein ...
Each autosomal gene is therefore represented by two copies, or alleles, with one copy inherited from each parent at fertilization. The expressed allele is dependent upon its parental origin. For example, the gene encoding insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2/Igf2) is only expressed from the allele inherited from the male. Although imprinting ...