What are some of the ways that genes can be regulated?

Question

these would regulate how much of a protein is made in the cell?

Answer 1

Regulation of gene expression (or gene regulation) refers to the cellular control of the amount and timing of changes to the appearance of the functional product of a gene. Although a functional gene product may be an RNA or a protein, the majority of known mechanisms regulate protein coding genes.

Examples of gene regualtion

Enzyme induction is a process in which a molecule (e.g. a drug) induces (i.e. initiates or enhances) the expression of an enzyme.

The induction of heat shock proteins in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

The Lac operon is an interesting example of how gene expression can be regulated.

Viruses despite having only a few genes, possess mechanisms to regulate their gene expression, typically into a early and late phase, using collinear systems regulated by anti-terminators (lambda phage) or splicing modulators (HIV)

Answer 2

Summarised here but see links for details - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcg...

http://www.emunix.emich.edu/~rwinning/ge...

Regulation of gene expression (or gene regulation) refers to the cellular control of the amount and timing of changes to the appearance of the functional product of a gene.

Regulation can occur at different levels:-

DNA modification - eg. methylation, phosphorylation and acetylation of bases in DNA.

Transcription - eg.repressors and activators

Post-transcriptional modification - eg. splicing

RNA transport

Translation

mRNA degradation

Post-translational modifications