Construct · 1 fields · 3 citations

operon: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

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operon1 CONSTRUCTOperonJACOB & MONOD · OPERON

A single standalone construct; nearby constructs are located against it in the Collider. Tap a field for its definition, unit, and measures.

Molecular genetics

A cluster of co-regulated genes under one shared promoter and operator

The term operon was coined by François Jacob, David Perrin, Carmen Sánchez, and Jacques Monod in a 1960 note to the French Academy of Sciences, and the concept was worked out in full by Jacob and Monod in 1961 through their study of how the bacterium Escherichia coli switches its lactose-digesting genes on and off. An operon is a stretch of DNA in which several neighbouring genes are copied together into a single messenger RNA under the control of one shared switch: a promoter, the site where the copying enzyme binds, and an operator, a nearby site where a repressor protein can sit to block copying until the cell needs those genes. Because the genes share one switch, the cell can turn a whole related set of them on or off at once, as the classic lac operon does when it activates the lactose enzymes only in the presence of lactose. The operon is a landmark of molecular biology because it gave the first clear mechanism for gene regulation, work that earned Jacob and Monod a share of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and although it is most common in bacteria and archaea it has since been documented in some eukaryotes as well.[1][2][3]

Unit
A contiguous group of co-regulated genes transcribed from one promoter as a single messenger RNA
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Identified from genome sequence and expression data by finding adjacent, co-transcribed genes that share a single promoter and operator, confirmed by mapping the messenger RNA transcript

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Nearby constructs

allele3 fields · 5 citationsjingle · one word, three constructstranscription2 fields · 2 citationsjingle · one word, two constructsexpression4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four constructs

References

  1. Jacob, F., Perrin, D., Sánchez, C., & Monod, J. (1960). L'opéron: Groupe de gènes à expression coordonnée par un opérateur. Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences, 250, 1727–1729.
  2. Jacob, F., & Monod, J. (1961). Genetic regulatory mechanisms in the synthesis of proteins. Journal of Molecular Biology, 3(3), 318–356. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-2836(61)80072-7
  3. Osbourn, A. E., & Field, B. (2009). Operons. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 66(23), 3755–3775. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-009-0114-3

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