Genes are working subunits of
DNA.
DNA is a vast chemical information database that carries the complete set
of instructions for making all the proteins a
cell will ever need. Each gene contains a particular set of
instructions, usually coding for a particular protein.
DNA exists as two long, paired strands spiraled into the famous double
helix. Each strand is made up of millions of chemical building blocks
called bases. While there are only four different
chemical bases in DNA (adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine), the
order in which the bases occur determines the information available, much
as specific letters of the alphabet combine to form words and sentences.
DNA resides in the core, or
nucleus, of each of the body's trillions of cells. Every human cell
(with the exception of mature red blood cells, which have no nucleus)
contains the same DNA. Each cell has 46 molecules of double-stranded DNA.
Each molecule is made up of 50 to 250 million bases housed in a
chromosome.
The DNA in each chromosome constitutes many genes (as well as vast
stretches of noncoding DNA, the function of which is unknown). A gene is
any given segment along the DNA that encodes instructions that allow a
cell to produce a specific product - typically, a
protein such as an
enzyme - that initiates one specific action. There are between 50,000
and 100,000 genes, and every gene is made up of thousands, even hundreds
of thousands, of chemical bases.
Human cells contain two sets of chromosomes, one set inherited from the
mother and one from the father. (Mature sperm and egg cells carry a single
set of chromosomes.) Each set has 23 single chromosomes - 22
autosomes and an X or Y
sex chromosome. (Females inherit an X from each parent, while males
get an X from the mother and a Y from the father.)
For a cell to make protein, the information from a gene is copied, base
by base, from DNA into new strands of messenger RNA (mRNA). Then mRNA
travels out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm, to cell organelles called
ribosomes. There, mRNA directs the assembly of amino acids that fold into
completed protein molecule.
