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Szybalski's Rule
Szybalski's rule says that lower-protein particles like viruses contain more purines than pyrimidine in their nucleic acid sequence. This is to prevent double-stranded RNA formation of one or two separate RNA strand that have complementary regions. The formation of a double-stranded RNA is not efficient for viruses as it may delay or stop RNA replication or protein formation. The rule is named for Wacław Szybalski Wacław Szybalski (Polish pronunciation: ; 9 September 1921 – 16 December 2020) was a Polish-American medical researcher, geneticist and professor of oncology at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin–Madison Me .... References Nucleic acids Virology {{molecular-biology-stub ...
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Virus
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most numerous type of biological entity. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1892 article describing a non-bacterial pathogen infecting tobacco plants and the discovery of the tobacco mosaic virus by Martinus Beijerinck in 1898, more than 16,000 of the millions of List of virus species, virus species have been described in detail. The study of viruses is known as virology, a subspeciality of microbiology. When infected, a host cell is often forced to rapidly produce thousands of copies of the original virus. When not inside an infected cell or in the process of infecting a cell, viruses exist in the form of independent viral particles, or ''virions'', consisting of (i) genetic material, i.e., long ...
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Purine
Purine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound that consists of two rings (pyrimidine and imidazole) fused together. It is water-soluble. Purine also gives its name to the wider class of molecules, purines, which include substituted purines and their tautomers. They are the most widely occurring nitrogen-containing heterocycles in nature. Dietary sources Purines are found in high concentration in meat and meat products, especially internal organs, such as liver and kidney, and in various seafoods, high-fructose beverages, alcohol, and yeast products. Examples of high-purine food sources include anchovies, sardines, liver, beef, kidneys, brains, monkfish, dried mackerel, and shrimp. Foods particularly rich in hypoxanthine, adenine, and guanine lead to higher blood levels of uric acid. Foods having more than 200 mg of hypoxanthine per 100 g, particularly animal and fish meats containing hypoxanthine as more than 50% of total purines, are more likely to increase uri ...
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Pyrimidine
Pyrimidine (; ) is an aromatic, heterocyclic, organic compound similar to pyridine (). One of the three diazines (six-membered heterocyclics with two nitrogen atoms in the ring), it has nitrogen atoms at positions 1 and 3 in the ring. The other diazines are pyrazine (nitrogen atoms at the 1 and 4 positions) and pyridazine (nitrogen atoms at the 1 and 2 positions). In nucleic acids, three types of nucleobases are pyrimidine derivatives: cytosine (C), thymine (T), and uracil (U). Occurrence and history The pyrimidine ring system has wide occurrence in nature as substituted and ring fused compounds and derivatives, including the nucleotides cytosine, thymine and uracil, thiamine (vitamin B1) and alloxan. It is also found in many synthetic compounds such as barbiturates and the HIV drug zidovudine. Although pyrimidine derivatives such as alloxan were known in the early 19th century, a laboratory synthesis of a pyrimidine was not carried out until 1879, when Grimaux repor ...
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Nucleic Acid
Nucleic acids are large biomolecules that are crucial in all cells and viruses. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomer components: a pentose, 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main classes of nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). If the sugar is ribose, the polymer is RNA; if the sugar is deoxyribose, a variant of ribose, the polymer is DNA. Nucleic acids are chemical compounds that are found in nature. They carry information in cells and make up genetic material. These acids are very common in all living things, where they create, encode, and store information in every living cell of every outline of life forms, life-form on Earth. In turn, they send and express that information inside and outside the cell nucleus. From the inner workings of the cell to the young of a living thing, they contain and provide information via the nucleic acid sequence. This gives the RNA and DNA their unmistakable 'la ...
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Double-stranded RNA
Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is RNA with two complementary strands found in cells. It is similar to DNA but with the replacement of thymine by uracil and the adding of one oxygen atom. Despite the structural similarities, much less is known about dsRNA. They form the genetic material of some viruses ( double-stranded RNA viruses). dsRNA, such as viral RNA or siRNA, can trigger RNA interference in eukaryotes, as well as interferon response in vertebrates. In eukaryotes, dsRNA plays a role in the activation of the innate immune system against viral infections. History of discovery Watson and Crick had noted early on that the 2′ hydroxyl group on each RNA nucleotide would prevent RNA from forming a double helix similar to the one they had described for DNA. In 1995, Alexander Rich Alexander Rich (15 November 1924 – 27 April 2015) was an American biologist and biophysicist. He was the William Thompson Sedgwick Professor of Biophysics at MIT (since 1958) and Harvard ...
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Complementarity (molecular Biology)
In molecular biology, complementarity describes a relationship between two structures each following the lock-and-key principle. In nature complementarity is the base principle of DNA replication and transcription as it is a property shared between two DNA or RNA sequences, such that when they are aligned antiparallel to each other, the nucleotide bases at each position in the sequences will be complementary, much like looking in the mirror and seeing the reverse of things. This complementary base pairing allows cells to copy information from one generation to another and even find and repair damage to the information stored in the sequences. The degree of complementarity between two nucleic acid strands may vary, from complete complementarity (each nucleotide is across from its opposite) to no complementarity (each nucleotide is not across from its opposite) and determines the stability of the sequences to be together. Furthermore, various DNA repair functions as well as ...
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RNA Replication
RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) or RNA replicase is an enzyme that catalyzes the replication of RNA from an RNA template. Specifically, it catalyzes synthesis of the RNA strand complementary to a given RNA template. This is in contrast to typical DNA-dependent RNA polymerases, which all organisms use to catalyze the transcription of RNA from a DNA template. RdRp is an essential protein encoded in the genomes of most RNA-containing viruses that lack a DNA stage, including SARS-CoV-2. Some eukaryotes also contain RdRps, which are involved in RNA interference and differ structurally from viral RdRps. History Viral RdRps were discovered in the early 1960s from studies on mengovirus and polio virus when it was observed that these viruses were not sensitive to actinomycin D, a drug that inhibits cellular DNA-directed RNA synthesis. This lack of sensitivity suggested the action of a virus-specific enzyme that could copy RNA from an RNA template. Distribution RdRps ar ...
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Protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, Cell signaling, responding to stimuli, providing Cytoskeleton, structure to cells and Fibrous protein, organisms, and Intracellular transport, transporting molecules from one location to another. Proteins differ from one another primarily in their sequence of amino acids, which is dictated by the Nucleic acid sequence, nucleotide sequence of their genes, and which usually results in protein folding into a specific Protein structure, 3D structure that determines its activity. A linear chain of amino acid residues is called a polypeptide. A protein contains at least one long polypeptide. Short polypeptides, containing less than 20–30 residues, are rarely considered to be proteins and are commonly called pep ...
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Wacław Szybalski
Wacław Szybalski (Polish pronunciation: ; 9 September 1921 – 16 December 2020) was a Polish-American medical researcher, geneticist and professor of oncology at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin–Madison Medical School. Early life Wacław Szybalski was born in September 1921 in Lwów, Poland, into a Polish intelligentsia family. His father Stefan was an engineer, and his mother, Michalina ''née'' Rakowska, was a Doctor of Chemistry. The Szybalski family maintained close friendships with numerous leading representatives of the Polish intelligentsia in Lwów, including Professor Jan Czekanowski, the father of Polish anthropology, and the bacteriologist, Professor Rudolf Stefan Weigl. In 1939 Szybalski graduated from the famous Gymnasium no. 8 in Lwów. After World War II broke out, from 23 September 1939, Lwów was occupied by the Soviet Union. Szybalski joined the Chemistry Department at the Lwów Polytechnic, where he was captivated by t ...
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Nucleic Acids
Nucleic acids are large biomolecules that are crucial in all cells and viruses. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomer components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main classes of nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). If the sugar is ribose, the polymer is RNA; if the sugar is deoxyribose, a variant of ribose, the polymer is DNA. Nucleic acids are chemical compounds that are found in nature. They carry information in cells and make up genetic material. These acids are very common in all living things, where they create, encode, and store information in every living cell of every life-form on Earth. In turn, they send and express that information inside and outside the cell nucleus. From the inner workings of the cell to the young of a living thing, they contain and provide information via the nucleic acid sequence. This gives the RNA and DNA their unmistakable 'ladder-step' order of ...
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