• Question: What are domains?

    Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Zhiming Darren Tan

      Zhiming Darren Tan answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      I thought you meant magnetic domains, which are regions in a magnet that are magnetised in the same direction.

    • Photo: Anna Bramwell-Dicks

      Anna Bramwell-Dicks answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      This is very dependent on the context!

      So I’ll answer in terms of computing… All devices that connect to the internet have their own IP address (which will look be in the format of 4 numbers that range from 0 to 255, separated by full stops e.g. 78.001.254.12). This includes the servers which host websites, your iPad or tablet, your mobile phone and your computer.

      You can think of an IP address like the address your post gets sent to – it’s the online equivalent.

      Now, what has this got to do with domains? Well, anything that uses the same IP address is part of the same domain. So, for example, the website http://www.bbc.co.uk has IP address: 212.58.246.92 and so does http://www.bbc.co.uk/news that is because they are part of the same domain.

    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      OK. I’ll do it from a Biochemistry point of view.

      A domain is part of a protein that has a specific function. For example some proteins, particularly those that are involved in deciding whether transcription of a specific gene should happen or not, can bind to a specific DNA sequence and to specific other proteins. So within that protein there is a sequence of amino acids that bind to a specific DNA sequence (the DNA-binding domain) and various sequences of amino acids that bind to specific proteins (protein-binding domains).

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