Gene

A gene (from ancient Greek: γόνος, gonos) is a locus (or region) of DNA which is made up of nucleotides and is the molecular unit of heredity. The term was introduced by Danish botanist, plant physiologist and geneticist Wilhelm Johannsen in 1905. The transmission of genes to an organisms offspring is the basis of the inheritance of phenotypic traits. These genes make up different DNA sequences called genotypes. Genotypes along with environmental and developmental factors determine what the phenotypes will be. Most biological traits are under the influence of polygenes (many different genes) as well as gene–environment interactions. Some genetic traits are instantly visible, such as eye color or number of limbs, and some are not, such as blood type, risk for specific diseases, or the thousands of basic biochemical processes that comprise life.Genes can acquire mutations in their sequence, leading to different variants, known as alleles, in the population. These alleles encode slightly different versions of a protein, which cause different phenotypical traits. Usage of the term having a gene (e.g., good genes, hair colour gene) typically refers to containing a different allele of the same, shared gene. Genes evolve due to natural selection or survival of the fittest of the alleles.The concept of a gene continues to be refined as new phenomena are discovered. For example, regulatory regions of a gene can be far removed from its coding regions, and coding regions can be split into several exons. Some viruses store their genome in RNA instead of DNA and some gene products are functional non-coding RNAs. Therefore, a broad, modern working definition of a gene is any discrete locus of heritable, genomic sequence which affect an organisms traits by being expressed as a functional product or by regulation of gene expression.

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