I may be misinterpreting what you said but it seems as though you consider 'start' 'stop' 'intron' 'exon' 'suppress' as properties of transcription factors. If

I may be misinterpreting what you said but it seems as though you consider 'start' 'stop' 'intron' 'exon' 'suppress' as properties of transcription factors. If this is not the case I apologize but to clear any misconception those are all properties of the DNA sequence, transcription factors BIND to DNA sequences but are not part of the gene itself.[0] I'm also not quite sure what is meant by suppress. Really all transcription factors do is up-regulate or down-regulate genes, i.e. make more proteins from this gene or make less. However simple that seems this is actually an extremely important function. Other than enabling cells to respond to say, heat, stress, or tension by making proteins that help them cope, gene regulation levels are important in differentiation. This is the process by which cells 'pick' a destiny, i.e. brain cells, kidney cells, etc. Generally, you can think of every cell in your body (with some limited exceptions) as containing all genes in your body, so how does the cell know what type of cell it should be? One way is by transcription factors, which will tell the cell make more of this kidney-related protein, or other proteins that help determine its fate. They have also been implicated in memory formation and almost everything else you can think of. But for the actual process of what transcription factors do they just regulate how much protein should be made from this gene. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_factor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_factor