alphat1

alphat1 is a fictional gene and protein used in biology education and in the construction of example datasets. It does not correspond to any verified entry in public sequence or protein databases.

In typical teaching materials, alphat1 is described as a single-copy gene in a hypothetical vertebrate model organism, encoding a protein of about 26–28 kDa. The protein is portrayed as soluble and cytosolic, with a single conserved domain that resembles generic enzymatic folds used for demonstration rather than a real function. The promoter region in examples contains common regulatory motifs used to illustrate transcriptional control concepts.

Annotation and analysis workflows use alphat1 to practice: retrieving the sequence, running similarity searches, predicting domains with standard databases, and assigning Gene Ontology terms at a high level. Students compare alphat1 orthologs in simulated species to discuss evolutionary conservation, divergence, and the reliability of automated annotations.

Usage and limitations: Because alphat1 is fictional, any functional hypotheses derived from its sequence or context are illustrative and should not be interpreted as real biology. Instructors typically label alphat1 as a teaching construct to avoid confusion with genuine genes and to focus on methodological skills rather than biological accuracy.

See also: placeholder gene, example dataset, teaching bioinformatics.