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  Home >> Molecular Biology Dictionary >> Layuering - Library Genome


Layering

Technique for vegetative propagation, in which new plants produce adventitious roots before being severed from the parent plant.

LCR
See ligase chain reaction.

Leader peptide
See signal sequence.

Leader sequence
A sequence of nucleotides at the 5’ end of an mRNA that is not translated into protein.

Leading strand
The strand of DNA that is synthesized continuously during replication.

Leaf blade
The usually flattened portion of the leaf.

Leaf bud cutting
A cutting that includes a short section of stem with attached leaf.

Leaf margin
The edge of a leaf.

Leaf primordium
(L. primordium, a beginning) A lateral outgrowth from the apical meristem, which will become a leaf when fully developed and expanded.

Leaf roll
Virus disease characterized by symptomatic curling of the host’s leaves.

Leaf scar
Mark left on a stem after leaf abscission.

Leaflet
Expanded leaflike part of a compound leaf.

Lectin
Any of a group of proteins, derived from plants, that can bind to specific oligosaccharides on the surface of cells, causing cells to clump together.

Leptonema
(adj: Leptotene) Stage in meiosis immediately preceding synapsis, in which the chromosomes appear as single, fine, threadlike structures (but they are really double because DNA replication has already taken place).

Lethal allele; lethal gene
A mutant form of a gene that eventually results in the death of an organism if expressed in the phenotype.

Lethal gene
See lethal allele.

Lethal mutation
See lethal allele.

Leucine zipper
A motif found in certain proteins in which Leu residues are evenly spaced through an a-helical region, such that they would end up on the same face of the heliux. Dimers can form between two such proteins. The Leu zipper is important in the function of transcription factors such as Fos and Jun and related proteins.

Library
A library might be either a genomic library, or a DNA library. In either case, the library is just a tube carrying a mixture of thousands of different clones-bacteria or 1 phages. Each clone carries an “insert” – the cloned DNA.

A cDNA linrary is usually a mixture of bacteria, where each bacteria carries a different plasmid. Inserted into the plasmids (one per plasmid) are thousands of different pieces of cDNA (Each typ. 500-5000 bp) copied from some source of mRNA, for example, total liver mRNA. The basic idea is that if you have a large enough number of different liver-derived cDNAs carried in those bacteria, there is a 99%, probability that a cDNA copy of any given liver mRNA exists somewhere in the tube. The real trick is to find the one you want out of that mess – a process called screening (see “Screening”).
A genomic DNA (and so contains introns and flanking regions, as well as coding and untranslated); 2 you needed bacteriophage 1 or cosmids, rather than plasmids, because….3) the inserts are usually 5-15 kb long (in a 1 library is most commonly a tube containing a mixture of 1 phages. Enough different phages must be present in the library so that any given piece of DNA from the source genome has a 99% probability of being present. A collection of cells, usually bacteria or yeast, that have been transformed with recombinant vectors carrying DNA inserts from a single species. See cDNA library; expression library; genomic library; bank; gene bank.

Life cycle
The complete sequence of events undergone by organisms of a particular species, from the fusion of gametes in one generation to the same stage in the following generation.

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