Noun

People, places, or things.

Verb

An action word.

Adverb

A verb modifier.

Prefixes

Endo-

Inside

Ect-

Outside

Research Settings

In Vivo Within the living

It refers to work that’s performed in a whole, living organism.

In Vitro Within the glass

When something is performed in vitro, it happens outside of a living organism.

In Situ In its original place

Something that’s performed in its natural context, but outside of a living organism.

Osmosis & Diffusion

Imbibition

A special type of diffusion where a liquid is absorbed by solids-colloids causing an increase in volume.

Imbibition can also control circadian rhythms in Arabidopsis thaliana and (probably) other plants.

Dry seeds germinate in part by imbibition.

Solids-Colloids

A mixture in which one substance, consisting of microscopically dispersed insoluble particles, is suspended throughout another substance.

Osmoticum

Balances water potential.

A substance that acts to supplement osmotic pressure in a cell.

Genetics

Homology

Similarity in anatomical structures or genes between organisms of different taxa due to shared ancestry, regardless of current functional differences.

Homology among proteins or DNA is inferred from their sequence similarity.

• Significant similarity is strong evidence that two sequences are related by divergent evolution from a common ancestor.

• Alignments of multiple sequences are used to discover the homologous regions.

Introgression Introgressive Hybridization

The transfer of genetic material from one species into the gene pool of another by the repeated backcrossing of an interspecific hybrid with one of its parent species.

Introgression also differs from simple hybridization. Simple hybridization results in a relatively even mixture; gene and allele frequencies in the first generation will be a uniform mix of two parental species, such as that observed in mules. Introgression, on the other hand, results in a complex, highly variable mixture of genes, and may only involve a minimal percentage of the donor genome.

Transgenic

Transgenic refers to an organism or cell whose genome has been altered by the introduction of one or more foreign DNA sequences from another species by artificial means.

Transgenic organisms are generated in the laboratory for research purposes.

Metabolomics

Proteome

The entire set of proteins that is, or can be, expressed by a genome, cell, tissue, or organism at a certain time.

It is the set of expressed proteins in a given type of cell or organism, at a given time, under defined conditions.

Proteomics

The study of the proteome.

Uncategorized

Homodimerization

A biological process where two identical protein molecules, known as monomers, bind to form a single, functional unit called a homodimer.

This dimerization event pushes the intracellular portions of the receptors together, activating their enzymatic function.