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( Gene) A gene is a unit of heredity in a living organism. It is normally a stretch of DNA that codes for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. All living things depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains. Genes hold the information to build and maintain an organism's cells and pass genetic traits to offspring. A modern working definition of a gene is "a locatable region of genomic sequence, corresponding to a unit of inheritance, which is associated with regulatory regions, transcribed regions, and or other functional sequence regions ".[1][2] Colloquial usage of the term gene (e.g. "good genes, "hair color gene") may actually refer to an allele a gene is the basic instruction, a sequence of nucleic acid (DNA or, in the case of certain viruses RNA), while an allele is one variant of that instruction. Thus, when the mainstream press refers to "having" a "gene" for a specific trait, the press is wrong. All people would have the gene in question, but certain people will have a specific allele of that gene, which results in the trait.

The notion of a gene[3] is evolving with the science of genetics, which began when Gregor Mendel noticed that biological variations are inherited from parent organisms as specific, discrete traits. The biological entity responsible for defining traits was later termed a gene, but the biological basis for inheritance remained unknown until DNA was identified as the genetic material in the 1940s. All organisms have many genes corresponding to many different biological traits, some of which are immediately visible, such as eye color or number of limbs, and some of which are not, such as blood type or increased risk for specific diseases, or the thousands of basic biochemical processes that comprise life.

The vast majority of living organisms encode their genes in long strands of DNA. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) consists of a chain made from four types of nucleotide subunits, each composed of a five-carbon sugar (2'-deoxyribose), a phosphate group, and one of the four bases adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. The most common form of DNA in a cell is in a double helix structure, in which two individual DNA strands twist around each other in a right-handed spiral. In this structure, the base pairing rules specify that guanine pairs with cytosine and adenine pairs with thymine. The base pairing between guanine and cytosine forms three hydrogen bonds, whereas the base pairing between adenine and thymine forms two hydrogen bonds. The two strands in a double helix must therefore be complementary, that is, their bases must align such that the adenines of one strand are paired with the thymines of the other strand, and so on.

Due to the chemical composition of the pentose residues of the bases, DNA strands have directionality. One end of a DNA polymer contains an exposed hydroxyl group on the deoxyribose; this is known as the 3' end of the molecule. The other end contains an exposed phosphate group; this is the 5' end. The directionality of DNA is vitally important to many cellular processes, since double helices are necessarily directional (a strand running 5'-3' pairs with a complementary strand running 3'-5'), and processes such as DNA replication occur in only one direction. All nucleic acid synthesis in a cell occurs in the 5'-3' direction, because new monomers are added via a dehydration reaction that uses the exposed 3' hydroxyl as a nucleophile.

Gene Subcategories

Gene Articles

Future Dental Plans May be Determined by Age 1 - Scientists Identify Tooth Development Gene by Susan Braden
Researchers at three universities, including Imperial College London School of Public Health, have identified five genes linking a baby’s first tooth and how many teeth he or she will have by 1 year old. Dental plans...

Resveratrol Vitamins </a>- The Ultimate Anti-Aging Formula by Rex Morrow
Resveratrol Vitamins - The Ultimate Anti-Aging Formula

Anti aging to many of us signifies searching and feeling more youthful, longer! It additionally indicates elevated energy,
combating an unhealthy lifestyle, dropping weight by i...

Recent Study Reveals that Right Genes the Key to Longevity! by Rob Dintaman
A new report recently came out in the medical journal Science describing an exciting study revealing the possibility of unlocking our genetic code as a method to identify how long we will live, and quite possibly increasing our life span. The study m...

Causes of Hair Loss in Women by Douglas Mullins
When you talk about genetic hair loss most people think about the most common form of hair loss: male-pattern baldness. This is the type of hair loss that is passed on genetically to offspring from their mothers. Most often the recipients of this typ...

Weight Problems by Jett Bellen
Are you being burdened of your weight problems? Are you often teased about your waistline in school or work? And have you been avoiding your home mirror because you don’t want to see your less-than magnificent body? Here are some helpful hints to ove...

EVOO for Beautiful Skin by Nadine Ali
Extra virgin olive oil is a tasty ingredient in salad dressings and Mediterranean dishes, and studies have found that olive oil can decrease the risk of heart disease and certain cancers, contributing to a prolonged life, when included in a diet. Ac...

What is Gene Smart Diet? Your Genotype and Weight Management by John C Arkin
Introduction

Floyd H. Chilton, PhD, a professor at Wake Forest University, authored the book on the Gene Smart Diet. In The Gene Smart Diet: The Revolutionary Eating Plan That Will Rewrite Your Genetic Destiny—And Melt Away The Pounds, Chi...

What Is Fatal Familial Insomnia by Murry Ferrell
This is probably by far one of the rarest forms of sleeping disorders around. This is an inherited disorder that has only been found in 28 families in the world that have the dominant gene for it. The offspring of a parent(s) of developing the disord...

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