Gene

TechnicalPracticalsciencehealth

Etymology

From Greek "genos" (birth, race, kind), coined by the Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen in 1909 as a name for the unit of inheritance, decades before anyone knew genes were made of DNA.

  1. noun · /JEEN/

    A stretch of DNA that carries the instructions for one inherited trait or one protein.

    What it names

    The individual unit of heredity — the discrete “entry” passed from parent to child that a whole field of medicine and ancestry now turns on.

    Example

    She inherited the gene for red hair from both parents, so the trait showed up in her.

    Related idea

    A gene is a functional unit of instruction; DNA is the chemical the instructions are written in. DNA is the paper and ink; a gene is a single sentence on it.

See also

CellDNAMutationProtein