Transcription factors

So I posted a link to one of those silly internet quizzes, this one being run as a promotion by a fairly minor scientific journal. And wow, I had forgotten how good those daft "what colour is your aura" personality quizzes are for generating conversation! I posted the type of protein one mainly because I was amused by how ridiculously over-specialist it is, but in fact people with no interest at all in protein chemistry wanted to have a go and talk about what the results meant.

And since people are interested, I might have a go at explaining the background behind the quiz, and also why I think transcription factors are cool. ( Science! )

Clear? Confusing? Over-simplified? Anyway I hope this goes some way to help you interpret your silly quiz result, and also to tell you why transcription factors are cool!