Upregulate

How it is used

Very common in results sections and lab meetings, often in the passive: 'the gene was upregulated twofold in treated cells'. A treatment can also 'upregulate' a pathway. Some journals write 'up-regulate' with a hyphen. The noun is 'upregulation'.

Example sentences

1. Twenty genes were upregulated more than fourfold after infection.

2. Low oxygen upregulates VEGF in many tumor types.

Common collocations

• significantly upregulated
• upregulated twofold
• upregulate expression
• upregulated genes
• downregulate

Related terms

• gene expressionThe process by which the information in a gene is used to make a product, usually a protein, and the level at which this happens in a cell.
• transcription factorA protein that binds to specific DNA sequences, usually near a promoter, and switches the transcription of certain genes on or off.
• qPCRQuantitative PCR, also called real-time PCR: a type of PCR that measures the amount of DNA as it is copied, using a fluorescent signal, to show how much target was in the sample.
• promoterA region of DNA just before a gene where RNA polymerase and transcription factors bind to start transcription.

More terms: Gene Expression and Regulation

• transcription
• translation
• mRNA
• codon
• exon
• intron
• epigenetics