gene

Over the 150 years since Mendel, the science of genetics has steadily advanced, with a notable acceleration in the pace of discovery during the half-century following World War II. By the time the Human Genome Project came to fruition in 2003, scientists had pieced together the following basic picture.5 A gene is a unit of heredity, corresponding to a specific segment of DNA code.6 It can best be thought of as a finite set of instructions that tells the body how to go about the basic functions it requires—either for building the tissues of a developing organism or for maintaining the life processes of a fully developed organism.

Michael Bess