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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Foleyha, Facevedo01.
Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Fatoomaq. Peer reviewers: Halah.F, Adube2014, DeeD13, Ghadisu.
It might be because when you see TATA labelled in a sequence, you see a box around it. But that would just be a guess. :-P --G3pro 01:58, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The term "box" likely stems from the original alignment of DNA sequences upstream of the base pair where transcription initiates in the bacterium Escherichia coli. A conserved sequence was observed by David Pribnow (James Watson Lab at Harvard) centered about 10 base pairs upstream of the transcriptional start site. The conserved sequence element in the alignment of different genes was boxed. The element for many years was termed the Pribnow box. The -10 element is most often used for this sequence motif and not TATA box (it is a partial TATA box, at best). -opus118
This information, or equivalent, properly sourced, should be included in the article. Particularly, the lead should explain the "box" part of the term. Robert K S (talk) 19:58, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
@DragonflySixtyseven and Robert K S: I am incredibly late to answering this question, but this and other sequences were named in the style of the Pribnow box. Pribnow himself did not give it a name, but a subsequent work here gave it this name for a rather literal reason. In one of the figures, the author lined up promoter fragment sequences, drew a literal box around the homologous region that Pribnow had noted, and then christened that name. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:17, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
'Melting DNA' is to make it single stranded by breaking the hydrogen bonds that join the 2 strands. 'Tm' is known as the melting temperature, that is the point at which 50% of the previously double stranded DNA molecules have become single stranded .
Also, i know it's a consensus sequence but is the most commonly used sequence not TATAA/TA? Matt
The name melting is used because heat is required to disrupt the (comparatively weak) hydrogen bonds. I think they used this because in their labs, they were "cooking" cell extracts with heat, perhaps in water bath or whatever was used back then (would be nice if wikipedia could include much more fotographs). 194.166.102.124 (talk) 10:35, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not knowledgeable in this area, but a glance around at some literature suggests that usually the TATA box is distinguished from the Pribnow box (even though it looks to me like the Pribnow consensus, TATAAT, is an extension of the typical TATA sequence, TATAA). Apparently the Pribnow is in prokaryotes, occurring 10 bases upstream of transcription start, whereas the "TATA box" is in eukaryotes and occurs ~25 bases upstream. If this is correct, the article should reflect these things (and reference the Pribnow box article). -R. S. Shaw20:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is correct what Zephyris wrote. TBP belongs to TFIID. The whole TFIID complex is larger than TBP alone, so TBP alone can not equal TBP. Look at drawings of the TFIID complex, i.e. in books like "cell biology". 194.166.102.124 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:37, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The histone sentence and title seems to have little to do with the rest of the article to a layman's eye. Could someone who is more sure add some type of clarification to connect the subject with the article, or remove it all together? --Bobo the Talking Clown (talk) 01:50, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]