Introduction to Gene Regulation

Study Skills

Reading textbooks and supplemental material is critical to becoming a successful student, as reading is an extremely effective way of learning if done actively.  Active reading means you are critically engaged with the material covered in the textbook.  You are forming questions, building summaries, and thinking about the topic.  There are a number of active reading techniques out there, but they are not "one-size fits all".  You need to experiment to see which technique works for you.  As a note, give each of them a try; you won't know what works until you try it.  Here is a video to help you consider different ways of reading the textbook.

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Suggested Reading

These brief articles are a supplement to the readings from your textbook on Gene Regulation. You do not have to finish these articles today, but they will help you understand gene regulation at a deeper level. They also make great references for your next milestone paper.

• Regulation of Transcription and Gene Expression in Eukaryotes
• Operons and Prokaryotic Gene Regulation
• Positive Transcription Control: The Glucose Effect
• Negative Transcription Regulation in Prokaryotes
• Obesity, Epigenetics, and Gene Regulation
• Environmental Influences on Gene Expression

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• Do we express all of our genes at the same time? Why?
• Do we need all of our genes expressed all the time? Why?
• Why do we have so many genes?

These are just a few of the questions you need to start asking yourself. Humans have hundreds of thousands of genes. Many are needed all the time (constitutive), but others are only needed when the cell get's certain signals. So how do we control the expression of all this genetic knowledge?

Think about the human body and homeostasis. Think about hormones. Are you always producing everything, or do you need to trigger some events?  Remember that you need at minimum the equivalent of 4ATP per amino acid incorporated into a protein. Add to this 1 ATP equivalent for each nucleotide during transcription. You should quickly realize that gene expression is energy expensive.

The regulation of genes is a very active field of research.  Biologists are looking at gene regulation dealing with the initial development of complex organisms, e.g. embryology, and the interaction between you and your microbiome (microbial community associated with an organism).  In order to understand this current research, you need to first understand the basic regulation systems.  To give you a hint at the importance of gene regulation, look at the following video.

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Daily Challenge

Why do we need gene regulation? Today, reflect on the need and use of gene regulation. Why would an organism need to have some genes that it could turn on or off? Why would you need to control gene expression? Can the environment affect gene regulation? Can gene regulation affect evolution?