BIOMG 1350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Intermediate Filament, Ribosome, Nuclear Pore

• School: Cornell University
• Department: Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Course: BIOMG 1350
• Professor: All

Document Summary

All living organisms are built on cells: small, membrane-enclosed units filled with a concentrated aqueous solution of chemicals and endowed with the ability to create copies of themselves by growing and dividing into two. Biologists estimate there may be up to 100 million distinct species of living things on our planet. A bacterial cell, lactobacillus, in a piece of cheese is a few micrometers in length. Cells vary just as widely in their shape. Differences in size, shape and chemical requirements reflect differences in cell function. Long dna polymer chains are from the same set of 4 monomers, called nucleotides. The information encoded in dna is read out, or transcribed into chemically related set of polymers called rna. A subset of these rna molecules is then translated into yet another type of polymer called a protein. Polymer: a substance that has a molecular structure consisting chiefly or entirely of a large number of similar units bonded together.