Peptide Basics
These are the basic building blocks that snap together to make a peptide.
What are amino acids?
Scientists use special peptides to sneak foreign DNA past this outer barrier of a cell.
What is the cell membrane?
Some peptides are made to bind to DNA and act like light switches, turning these specific sequences on or off
What are genes?
A lot of GMO crops are changed so they naturally make these short amino acid chains to fight off bugs.
What are peptides?
Peptides are basically just shorter, mini versions of these big, complicated molecules.
What are proteins?
Since DNA has a negative charge, the delivery peptides need to have this kind of charge so they stick together like magnets.
What is a positive charge?
These common DNA-grabbing peptide parts are named after a certain metal and are used to target exact spots for editing.
What are Zinc Fingers?
To keep crops from getting gross and rotting, GMOs are made to produce AMPs, which stands for this.
What are Antimicrobial Peptides?
This is the specific chemical bond that glues amino acids together in a chain.
What is a peptide bond?
Peptides wrap around the DNA like a shield to stop these destructive enzymes in the cell from chewing it up.
What are nucleases?
Peptides can block this specific enzyme so it can't unzip the DNA strand, which stops the DNA from copying itself.
What is helicase?
When making GMO plants, peptides are used to safely drag new DNA through this tough outer wall that animal cells don't have.
What is the cell wall?
When a peptide is super short, like between 2 and 20 amino acids, it gets this fancy prefix
What is an oligopeptide?
The very first cell-penetrating peptide scientists found was actually taken from this super famous and dangerous human virus.
What is HIV?
This is what it's called when peptides change how tight DNA is wrapped up, which changes what the genes do without actually changing the DNA code itself.
What is epigenetics?
Using peptides to get DNA into plants is way better than the old way, which actually used this kind of infectious germ to force the DNA inside.
What is a virus (or bacteria)?
The way a peptide folds up decides if it can grab onto this famous double-helix molecule.
What is DNA?
This is the scientific word for when positive peptides and negative DNA clump together into a package
What is complexation?
CRISPR usually uses a giant protein, but scientists are making artificial, smaller versions out of these to cut DNA in really tight spaces.
What are peptide nucleases?
In crazy new GMO tech, peptides are sometimes hooked up to these tiny cylinders made of pure carbon to shoot DNA straight into plant cells.
What are carbon nanotubes?