Pharma IQ Glossary: Gene
A Gene is defined as a natural unit of hereditary material that is the physical basis for the transmission of the characteristics of living organisms from one generation to another. The basic genetic material is fundamentally the same in all living organisms. It consists of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in most organisms and ribonucleic acid (RNA) in certain viruses, and is usually associated in a linear arrangement that, in part, constitutes the chromosome. The average length of a gene is 1µm and thus, about one million genes could be contained in a one-meter stretch of DNA. The segment of DNA that is involved in producing a polypeptide chain, it includes regions preceding (leader) and following (trailer) the coding region as well as intervening sequences (introns) between individual coding segments (exons).
