Cell Biology Test One Vocab Chapter One

Front 1

Absorption

Back 1

The process of absorbing substances into cells or across the tissues and organs through diffusion or osmosis, as in absorption of nutrients by the digestive system, or absorption of drugs into the bloodstream.

Front 2

Antigen

Back 2

A foreign or abnormal substance that can trigger an immune response

Front 3

Bioinformatics

Back 3

Using computers to analyze the vast amounts of data generated by sequencing and expression studies on genomes and proteomes

Front 4

Brightfield microscopy

Back 4

Light microscopy of specimen that possesses color, has been stained, o has some other property that affects the amount of light that passes through, thereby allowing an image to be formed.

Front 5

Cell theory

Back 5

Theory of cellular organization stating that all organisms consist of one or more cells, that the cell is the basic unit of structure for all organisms, and that all cells arise only from preexisting cells.

Front 6

Chromatography

Back 6

a group of related techniques that utilize the flow of a fluid phase over a non-mobile absorbing phase to separate molecules based on their relative affinities for the two phases, which in turn reflect differences in size, charge, hydrophobicity, or affinity for a particular chemical group

Front 7

Chromosome theory of heredity

Back 7

Theory stating that hereditary factors are located in the chromosomes within the nucleus.

Front 8

Clone

Back 8

Organism (or cell or molecule) that is genetically identical to another organism (or cell or molecule) from which it is derived

Front 9

Confocal microscope

Back 9

specialized type of light microscope that employs a laser beam to illuminate a single plane of the specimen at a time

Front 10

Cytology

Back 10

Study of cellular structure, based primarily on microscopic techniques

Front 11

Digital deconvolution microscopy

Back 11

Technique in which fluorescence microscopy is used to acquire a series of images through the thickness of a specimen, followed b computer analysis to remove the contribution of out of focus light to the image in each focal plane

Front 12

Electron microscope

Back 12

Instrument that uses a beam of electrons to visualize cellular structures and thereby examine cellular architecture; the resolution is much greater than that of the light microscope, allowing detailed ultrastructural examination.

Front 13

Electrophoresis

Back 13

A group of related techniques that utilize an electrical field to separate electrically charged molecules

Front 14

Enzyme

Back 14

Biological catalyst; protein (or sometimes RNA) molecule that acts on one or more specific substrates, converting them to products with different molecular structures

Front 15

Fluorescence

Back 15

Property of molecules that absorb light and then reemit the energy as light of a lower wavelength

Front 16

Fluorescence microscopy

Back 16

Light microscope technique that focuses ultraviolet rays on the specimen, there by causing fluorescent compounds in the specimen to emit visible light

Front 17

FRET (fluorescence resonance energy transfer)

Back 17

An extremely short-distance interaction between two fluorescent molecules in which excitation is trasferred from a donor molecule to an acceptor molecule directly; can be used to determine whether two molecules are in contact, or to produce "biosensors" that detect where proteins are activated or identify changes in local ion concentration.

Front 18

Gene

Back 18

"hereditary factor" that specifies an inherited trage; consists of a DNA abase sequence that codes for the amino acid sequence of one or more polypeptide chains, or alternatively, for one of several types of RNA that perform functions other than coding for polypeptide chains (ie rRNA, tRNA, snRNA, microRNA)

Front 19

Genome

Back 19

The DNA (or from some viruses, RNA) that contains one complete copy of all the genetic information of an organism or virus.

Front 20

Green fluorescent protein (GFP)

Back 20

A protein that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to blue light. Using genetic engineering techniques, GFP can be fused to non-fluorescent proteins, allowing them to be followed using fluorescence microscopy

Front 21

Microtime

Back 21

Instrument used to slice an embedded biological specimen into thin sections for light microscopy

Front 22

Multiphoton excitation (MEM)

Back 22

Specialized type of fluorescence light microscope employing a laser beam that emits rapid pulses of light; images are similar in sharpness to confocal microscopy, but photodamage is minimized because there is little out of focus light.

Front 23

Organelle

Back 23

Any membrane-bounded, intracellular structure that is specialized for carrying out a particular function. Eukaryotic cells contain several kinds of membrane-enclosed organelles, including the nucleus, mitochondria, Golgi complex, endoplasmic reticulum, lysosomes, peroxisomes, secretory vesicles, and, in the case of plants, chloroplasts

Front 24

Photoactivation

Back 24

Light-induced activation of an inert molecule to an active state; generally associated with the ultraviolet light-induced release of a caging group that had blocked the fluorescence of a molecule that it had been attached to.

Front 25

Phtotobleaching

Back 25

Technique in which an intense beam of light within a well-defined area is used to render fluorescent molecules, non-fluorescent; the rate at which unbleached fluorescent molecules repopulate the bleached area provides information about the dynamic movements of the molecule of interest.

Front 26

Photon

Back 26

Fundamental particle of light with an energy content that is inversely proportional to its wavelength

Front 27

Proteome

Back 27

The structure and properties of all the proteins produced by a genome

Front 28

Resolution

Back 28

Minimum distance that can separate two points that still remain identifiable as separate points when viewed through a microscope

Front 29

Scanning electron microscope

Back 29

Microscope in which an electron beam scans across the surface of a specimen and forms an image from electrons that are deflected from the outer surface of the specimen.

Front 30

Subcellular fractionation

Back 30

Technique for isolating organelles from cell homogenates using various types of centifugation

Front 31

mm, μm, nm

Back 31

mm: can be seen with the naked eye
μm: micrometer, 10^-6 m (bacterial cells)
nm: nanometer 10^-9 m (cannot be seen with a light microscope)

Front 32

Microscopy

Back 32

The technical field of using microscopes to view samples and objects that cannot be seen with the unaided eye

Front 33

Photodamage

Back 33

Photoaging Dermatology The structural and functional deterioration of sun-exposed skin, resulting in wrinkling, roughness, altered texture, discoloration, etc.

Front 34

Probe

Back 34

A small device, esp. an electrode, used for measuring, testing, or obtaining information.

Front 35

Green fluorescent protein

Back 35

A protein that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to blue light. Using genetic engineering techniques, GFP can be fused to non-fluorescent proteins, allowing them to b followed using fluorescence microscopy

Front 36

Caged compounds

Back 36

Fluorophores that have been chemically modified with a caging group that quenches their fluorescence until a brief pulse (usually <100 ms) of ~350-nm light breaks the photolabile bond connecting the fluorophore and the caging group.

Front 37

Green fluorescent protein

Back 37

A protein composed of 238 amino acid residues that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to light in the blue to ultraviolet range. Although many other marine organisms have similar green fluorescent proteins, GFP traditionally refers to the protein first isolated from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria

Front 38

Chromosome

Back 38

A threadlike structure of nucleic acids and protein found in the nucleus of most living cells, carrying genetic information in the form of genes.

Front 39

Antibody

Back 39

A class of proteins produced by lymphocytes that bind with extraordinary specificity to substances, referred to as antigens, that provoke an immune response

Front 40

DAPI

Back 40

A fluorescent stain that binds strongly to A-T rich regions in DNA. It is used extensively in fluorescence microscopy. DAPI can pass through an intact cell membrane therefore it can be used to stain both live and fixed cells

Front 41

What are the bonds between DNA pairs?

Back 41

Guanine and cytosine have triple bond in between and Adenine and Thymine have double bond in between them

Front 42

Cheating

Back 42

A metaphor commonly used in behavioral ecology to describe organisms that receive a benefit at the cost of other organisms. Cheating is common in many mutualistic and altruistic relationships.[1] Natural selection favors cheating, but there are mechanisms to regulate cheating.

Front 43

Excited state

Back 43

An atom or nucleus (particle or system) which possesses more energy than its ground state energy.

Front 44

Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP)

Back 44

The idea behind this method is to use FRAP to measure the ability of a molecule to move around over time.

Front 45

Fura-2

Back 45

A ratiometric and sensitive indicator dye for measuring intracellular calcium.

Front 46

Ground state

Back 46

The state of a nucleus, atom or molecule at its lowest energy. (The stationary state of lowest energy of a particle or system of particles)

Front 47

Immunofluorescence

Back 47

A technique used for light microscopy with a fluorescence microscope and is used primarily on microbiological samples. This technique uses the specificity of antibodies to their antigen to target fluorescent dyes to specific biomolecule targets within a cell, and therefore allows visualisation of the distribution of the target molecule through the sample.

Front 48

Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET)

Back 48

A nonradiative transfer of energy between two fluorescent molecules (a donor and an acceptor) in nanometer range proximity.

intermolecular: existing or taking place between molecules.

intramolecular: existing or taking place within a molecule.

Front 49

Mass spectrometry (MS)

Back 49

An analytical technique that produces spectra (singular spectrum) of the masses of the molecules comprising a sample of material. The spectra are used to determine the elemental composition of a sample, the masses of particles and of molecules, etc

Front 50

What is the relationship between wavelength and energy?

Back 50

The amount of energy is inversely related to the wavelength of the light: the shorter the wavelength, the greater the energy of each photon of the light.

Front 51

Transmission electron microscopy

Back 51

A microscopy technique whereby a beam of electrons is transmitted through an ultra-thin specimen, interacting with the specimen as it passes through. An image is formed from the interaction of the electrons transmitted through the specimen; the image is magnified and focused onto an imaging device

Front 52

Ultracentrifuge

Back 52

A very fast centrifuge used to precipitate large biological molecules from solution or separate them by their different rates of sedimentation.

Front 53

Yellow fluorescent protein

Back 53

a genetic mutant of green fluorescent protein (GFP) originally derived from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria.
Like the parent GFP, YFP is a useful tool in cell and molecular biology thanks to its properties useful for fluorescence microscopy.