How to Use transcription factor in a Sentence

transcription factor

noun
  • In us, the logic of transcription factors is more difficult to parse.
    — Philip Ball, Quanta Magazine, 18 June 2026
  • The original process involved a set of four genes that code for proteins called transcription factors.
    — Michael Irving, New Atlas, 14 Mar. 2025
  • The other pathway suppresses a transcription factor that seems to promote a longer life span.
    — Viviane Callier, Quanta Magazine, 10 Jan. 2023
  • Enhancers bind many transcription factors to produce that crowding.
    — Philip Ball, Quanta Magazine, 14 Feb. 2024
  • In bacteria, transcription factors are rather like keys that fit the locks of unique binding sites on DNA.
    — Philip Ball, Quanta Magazine, 18 June 2026
  • Some of his recent work has involved a transcription factor called HIF-2.
    — Markham Heid, Time, 26 Dec. 2022
  • Biologists do know that most enhancers won’t respond to a single transcription factor.
    — Philip Ball, Quanta Magazine, 18 June 2026
  • That doesn’t mean that fifteen years from now doctors will be able to prescribe a course of transcription factors to cure PSP.
    — Jacqueline Detwiler, Popular Mechanics, 3 Oct. 2018
  • Puri and the team see their findings as an opportunity to expand ideas about how transcription factors operate.
    — Ashley MacKin Solomon, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Aug. 2025
  • Genes rely on transcription factors to perform many essential functions in organs.
    — Emily Mullin, WIRED, 22 Aug. 2024
  • When Wuarin performed the isolation, the transcription factor had failed to appear.
    — Quanta Magazine, 15 Sep. 2015
  • Dasen and his colleagues also looked at a genetic transcription factor called Foxp1, located at the spinal cord in tetrapods.
    — Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian, 9 Feb. 2018
  • There’s always another gene or transcription factor involved.
    — Laura Helmuth, Scientific American, 24 Oct. 2024
  • Here, the researchers demonstrated how this protein acts as a switch (a transcription factor), turning on genes in the B cell that had until that moment been inactive.
    — New Atlas, 21 Nov. 2025
  • This transcription factor upregulates the activity of 345 genes, most of them known to respond to salt, drought, and cold stresses.
    — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 29 July 2022
  • These messenger molecules go on to act as the blueprints for protein production, so preventing a transcription factor from working can cause all sorts of problems.
    — Veronique Greenwood, Discover Magazine, 31 Oct. 2011
  • For one thing, our transcription factors don’t show strong preferences for particular DNA binding sites.
    — Philip Ball, Quanta Magazine, 18 June 2026
  • The genetic transcription factors that handle the development of sea robins’ legs are also found in other animals’ limbs–including our own.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 26 Sep. 2024
  • This protein, or transcription factor, allows researchers to better control the T cell by inducing it to produce a specific protein.
    — Gregory Allen, The Conversation, 15 Dec. 2022
  • Central to this feat was the discovery of two transcription factors—Sox and POU—within the choanoflagellate genome.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes, 11 Dec. 2024
  • The Church lab’s key discovery was identifying a pair of proteins — known as transcription factors — that reprogram pluripotent stem cells into ovary building blocks in just five days.
    — Ryan Cross, BostonGlobe.com, 21 Mar. 2023
  • Currently, the team is searching for similar transcription factors in lungs with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and kidneys with chronic kidney disease.
    — Emily Mullin, WIRED, 22 Aug. 2024
  • Frazer wanted to know how a heart-specific transcription factor called NKX2-5 influenced those traits.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 10 Sep. 2020
  • The team evolved a transcription factor—a protein that activates the expression of a gene target—with mutations only beneficial in mammalian cells, not bacteria.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 27 July 2025
  • And although the activity of key transcription factor genes was similar in common cell types, the activity of other genes in some cell types differed more than the researchers expected between the two species.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Unfortunately, a couple of those genes provide the blueprint for additional transcription factors, which then switch on pro-inflammatory genes.
    — New Atlas, 21 Nov. 2025
  • One of these is NF-kB which is a transcription factor critical for the activation of the entire inflammatory pathway.
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 20 Feb. 2023
  • The mutation may be in a transcription factor that regulates the activity of EPAS1.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 1 July 2010
  • Understanding how ancient transcription factors drive pluripotency could lead to novel approaches in regenerative medicine.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes, 11 Dec. 2024
  • As with other species, the scientists reprogrammed the elephant cells by exposing them to a series of different chemicals and then adding proteins called transcription factors that turn on particular genes to change how the cells functions.
    — Matt Reynolds, WIRED, 6 Mar. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'transcription factor.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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