What's a Gene?

What's a Gene?

In 1909, Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word "gene" to describe Mendelian units of heredity. As researchers learned more, they began to define genes as a segment of a DNA molecule that contains information for making a protein or, sometimes, an RNA molecule. The term continues to evolve as scientists learn about the complexities of molecular interactions. Listen to some well-known scientists respond to the question, "What's a gene?"

 
 

Here are the interviews:

Ewan Birney, Ph.D. European Bioinformatics Institute	Carlos D. Bustamante, Ph.D. Stanford University Department of Genetics
Francis S. Collins, M.D. National Institutes of Health	Elise Feingold, Ph.D. National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH
Eric D. Green, M.D., Ph.D. National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH	Bruce Korf, M.D., Ph.D. University of Alabama School of Medicine
Michael F. Murray, M.D. Brigham and Women's Hospital	Heidi L. Rehm, Ph.D. Harvard Medical School
Marc S. Williams, M.D Intermountain Healthcare	Richard K. Wilson, Ph.D. Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Last Updated: February 4, 2016