LIFE 102 Lecture Notes - Tobacco Mosaic Virus, Lytic Cycle, Myod
Document Summary
Myoblasts produce muscle-specific proteins and form skeletal muscle cells. Myod is one of several master regulatory genes that produce proteins that commit the cell to becoming skeletal muscle. The myod protein is a transcription factor that binds to enhancers of various target genes. Maternal effect genes encode for cytoplasmic determinants that initially establish the axes of the body of drosophila. These maternal effect genes are also called egg-polarity genes because they control orientation of the egg and consequently the fly. One maternal effect gene, the bicoid gene, affects the front half of the body. An embryo whose mother has a mutant bicoid gene lacks the front half of its body and has duplicate posterior structures at both ends. Viruses called bacteriophages can infect and set in motion a genetic takeover of bacteria, such as escherichia coli. Viruses lead a kind of borrowed life between life-forms and chemicals.
