Spatiotemporal gene expressionSpatiotemporal gene expression is the activation of genes within specific tissues of an organism at specific times during development. Gene activation patterns vary widely in complexity. Some are straightforward and static, such as the pattern of tubulin, which is expressed in all cells at all times in life. Some, on the other hand, are extraordinarily intricate and difficult to predict and model, with expression fluctuating wildly from minute to minute or from cell to cell.
Genome projectGenome projects are scientific endeavours that ultimately aim to determine the complete genome sequence of an organism (be it an animal, a plant, a fungus, a bacterium, an archaean, a protist or a virus) and to annotate protein-coding genes and other important genome-encoded features. The genome sequence of an organism includes the collective DNA sequences of each chromosome in the organism. For a bacterium containing a single chromosome, a genome project will aim to map the sequence of that chromosome.
HeredityHeredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic information of their parents. Through heredity, variations between individuals can accumulate and cause species to evolve by natural selection. The study of heredity in biology is genetics. In humans, eye color is an example of an inherited characteristic: an individual might inherit the "brown-eye trait" from one of the parents.
PolygeneA polygene is a member of a group of non-epistatic genes that interact additively to influence a phenotypic trait, thus contributing to multiple-gene inheritance (polygenic inheritance, multigenic inheritance, quantitative inheritance), a type of non-Mendelian inheritance, as opposed to single-gene inheritance, which is the core notion of Mendelian inheritance. The term "monozygous" is usually used to refer to a hypothetical gene as it is often difficult to distinguish the effect of an individual gene from the effects of other genes and the environment on a particular phenotype.
PenetrancePenetrance in genetics is the proportion of individuals carrying a particular variant (or allele) of a gene (the genotype) that also expresses an associated trait (the phenotype). In medical genetics, the penetrance of a disease-causing mutation is the proportion of individuals with the mutation that exhibit clinical symptoms among all individuals with such mutation. For example, if a mutation in the gene responsible for a particular autosomal dominant disorder has 95% penetrance, then 95% of those with the mutation will develop the disease, while 5% will not.
PharmacogenomicsPharmacogenomics is the study of the role of the genome in drug response. Its name (pharmaco- + genomics) reflects its combining of pharmacology and genomics. Pharmacogenomics analyzes how the genetic makeup of a patient affects their response to drugs. It deals with the influence of acquired and inherited genetic variation on drug response, by correlating DNA mutations (including single-nucleotide polymorphisms, copy number variations, and insertions/deletions) with pharmacokinetic (drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination), pharmacodynamic (effects mediated through a drug's biological targets), and/or immunogenic endpoints.
MultiomicsMultiomics, multi-omics, integrative omics, "panomics" or "pan-omics" is a biological analysis approach in which the data sets are multiple "omes", such as the genome, proteome, transcriptome, epigenome, metabolome, and microbiome (i.e., a meta-genome and/or meta-transcriptome, depending upon how it is sequenced); in other words, the use of multiple omics technologies to study life in a concerted way.
Causes of schizophreniaThe causes of schizophrenia that underlie the development of schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder, are complex and not clearly understood. A number of hypotheses including the dopamine hypothesis, and the glutamate hypothesis have been put forward in an attempt to explain the link between altered brain function and the symptoms and development of schizophrenia. The exact pathophysiology of schizophrenia remains poorly understood. The most commonly supported theories are the dopamine hypothesis and the glutamate hypothesis.
HaplotypeA haplotype (haploid genotype) is a group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent. Many organisms contain genetic material (DNA) which is inherited from two parents. Normally these organisms have their DNA organized in two sets of pairwise similar chromosomes. The offspring gets one chromosome in each pair from each parent. A set of pairs of chromosomes is called diploid and a set of only one half of each pair is called haploid.
