Glossary

Alignment, an order preserving matching of the symbols of two or more sequences to optimise some criterion.
Amino acid, the 20 (common) amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.
Codon, a triplet of coding DNA bases which corresponds to one amino acid in the protein.
DNA={A,C,G,T}.
DPA, dynamic programming algorithm, esp. as in sequence alignment.
Eukaryote, a "higher" organism where the cell has a nucleus containing (nuclear) DNA.
Exon, part of a gene which is expressed, that is translated to protein.
Gene, a region of DNA that contains regulatory regions and the DNA that codes for a protein (but alternative splicing, genes within introns etc., cloud this picture).
Genetic code, the mapping of codon->amino acid during translation.
Genome, the DNA complement of an organism, and in eukaryotes usually the nuclear genome.
Hydrophilic, likes water, esp. as a property of some amino acids.
Hydrophobic, dislikes water, esp. as a property of some amino acids.
Information, the information in an event E of probability pr(E) is -log₂(pr(E)) bits.
Intron, part of a gene which is translated to mRNA then edited out, i.e., not expressed as protein, but possibly has regulatory functions.
miRNA, micro-RNA, short (40±) pieces of RNA that play a regulatory function in eukaryotes.
Mitochondria, part of a cell to do with creating energy, and having its own (small) genome.
mRNA, messenger RNA.
Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary, family tree, often inferred from DNA and/or protein sequences.
Primary structure (sequence) of protein, a protein's sequence of amino acids.
Prokaryote, a simpler organism without a cell nucleus (see eukaryote).
Protein.
Purine=R={A,G}.
Pyrimidine=Y={C,T}.
RNA={A,C,G,U}.
Secondary structure, "local structures" of proteins, often classified into helix, turn and other.
siRNA, small interfering RNA, see miRNA.
Tertiary structure of protein, the 3-dimensional structure of a folded protein.
Transcription, process in which DNA->mRNA.
Translation, process in which mRNA->protein.
tRNA, transfer RNA, determine the translation process.