Glossary Term
Any transmissible change in the genetic material of an organism, which can result from radiation, viral infection, transposition, treatment with mutagenic chemicals and errors during DNA replication or meiosis. The effects of mutation range from single base changes to loss or gain of complete chromosomes. As many of the simpler alterations to DNA may be repaired, such changes are only heritable once the change is fixed in the DNA by the process of replication. Mutations may be associated with genetic diversity or with pathologies including cancer.
Pcr Terms
Glossary Term
A control sample where a negative result is expected, to help correlate a positive result with the variable being tested.
Pcr Terms
Glossary Term
A test result that indicates that a specific disease, condition, or attribute being assessed is not present.
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Glossary Term
Technologies that facilitate the rapid determination of the nucleotide sequence of large numbers of strands or segments of DNA or RNA.
Pcr Terms
Glossary Term
Any part of a signal that is not the true or original signal but is introduced by the communication mechanism.
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Glossary Term
In statistical inference procedures (hypothesis tests and confidence intervals), nonparametric procedures are those that are relatively free of assumptions about population parameters.
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Glossary Term
A point mutation occurring within the protein-coding region of a gene, and which codes for a stop that can truncate the protein.
Pcr Terms
Glossary Term
A family of probability density functions whose mean, median and mode are identical. The function generates a symmetrical curve, whose position and shape is determined by its location and scale parameters, the mean and standard deviation respectively. The standard normal distribution has a location parameter of 0 and a scale parameter of 1.
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Glossary Term
Any of various amplification and detection strategies applied to detection of virus contamination in donor blood. Specifically designed to detect recently infected individuals during the latency period before seroconversion.
Pcr Terms
Glossary Term
A subunit of DNA or RNA consisting of a nitrogenous base (adenine, guanine, thymine, or cytosine in DNA; adenine, guanine, uracil, or cytosine in RNA), a phosphate molecule, and a sugar molecule (deoxyribose in DNA and ribose in RNA).
Pcr Terms
Glossary Term
Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) mends DNA regions that contain chemical adducts, such as UV-induced thymine dimers or carcinogenic adducts, which distort the DNA helix and interfere with replication and transcription. NER is targeted to actively transcribed regions of the genome. During NER in eukaryotes, shape irregularities are detected by protein complexes that slide along the DNA molecule and induce cuts on each side of a lesion several nucleotides away. Removal of the damaged 25-30 nucleotide fragment is followed by repair synthesis and ligation.
Pcr Terms
Glossary Term
A statistical method to test if observations are significant or due to chance. It proposes that no statistical significance exists in a set of given observations and attempts to show that no variation exists between variables or that a single variable is no different than its mean. It is presumed to be true until statistical evidence nullifies it for an alternative hypothesis.
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