• Question: what is a gene?

    Asked by to Dave, Ditte on 27 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Dave Baker

      Dave Baker answered on 27 Jun 2014:

      A gene is like a paragraph in a book. It a sub unit of a chapter and describes one thing. There are only four letters, ACGT, and like a story my start with ‘Once’, the working bit of a gene starts with ATG. When they are functional they make protein to do something…

    • Photo: Ditte Hedegaard

      Ditte Hedegaard answered on 27 Jun 2014:

      A gene may hold the genetic information to how we look or how our cells function.

      As Dave says the information is made up of a combination of the nucleotides guanine (G), adenine (A), thymine (T) and cytosine (C). The combination of the nucleotides is different for each gene and the genes therefore have different functions. However all genes starts with the code ATG, also called the start codon and will finish with either TAG, TAA or TGA. The cell has to find the start codon in order to activate the gene. The human genome consists of 20,000 genes, so the cell has to find the 20,000 ATGs scattered around in the genome. What amazes me is how efficient and quick the cell is at finding them!

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