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DNA damages cause changes in the structure of the genetic material and prevents the replication mechanism from functioning and performing properly. [1] The DNA damage response (DDR) is a complex signal transduction pathway which recognizes when DNA is damaged and initiates the cellular response to the damage.
In biochemistry, denaturation is a process in which proteins or nucleic acids lose folded structure present in their native state due to various factors, including application of some external stress or compound, such as a strong acid or base, a concentrated inorganic salt, an organic solvent (e.g., alcohol or chloroform), agitation and radiation, or heat. [3]
The genetic material of a virus is stored within a viral protein structure called the capsid. The capsid is a "shield" that protects the viral nucleic acids from getting degraded by host enzymes or other types of pesticides or pestilences. It also functions to attach the virion to its host, and enable the virion to penetrate the host cell membrane.
The process of DNA denaturation can be used to analyze some aspects of DNA. Because cytosine / guanine base-pairing is generally stronger than adenine / thymine base-pairing, the amount of cytosine and guanine in a genome is called its GC-content and can be estimated by measuring the temperature at which the genomic DNA melts. [2]
Furthermore, one can assess whether the folding proceeds according to a two-state unfolding as described above. This can be done with differential scanning calorimetry by comparing the calorimetric enthalpy of denaturation i.e. the area under the peak, to the van 't Hoff enthalpy described as follows:
The sequence of a gene can be altered in a number of ways. [48] Gene mutations have varying effects on health depending on where they occur and whether they alter the function of essential proteins. Mutations in the structure of genes can be classified into several types. [citation needed]
In some species of RNA virus, the genes are not on a continuous molecule of RNA, but are separated. The influenza virus, for example, has eight separate genes made of RNA. When two different strains of influenza virus infect the same cell, these genes can mix and produce new strains of the virus in a process called reassortment. [33]
Each box is a gene. Numbers indicate genes (or rather open reading frames). The "early", "middle" (DNA replication), and "late" genes (virus structure), roughly represent the time course of gene expression. [75] Bacteriophage genomes can be highly mosaic, i.e. the genome of many phage species appear to be composed of numerous individual modules ...