What is a gene?
In our body, if we look in the DNA of a cell, there is so called gene at a fixed position on a chromosome carrying hereditary information and code to make proteins for our cells to function properly.
Number of genes required to build a human being?
In human, there are total of 20,000 to 25000 genes based on the estimate provided by the Human Genome Project . We inherit two copies of each gene, one from each parent. It is striking that most of the genes are same, but yet we are very different people in this world. Thanks to the 1% of total genes that are slightly different to each individual. These genes have different sequence of DNA bases and that’s what contributes to the uniqueness in our physical features.
Picture credit Top and fashionable genes in humans beings
Dr. Peter Kerpedjiev with Nature journal has put together this interesting data on the most studied genes of all time [1].
“The exercise offers more than a conversation starter: it sheds light on important trends in biomedical research, revealing how concerns over specific diseases or public-health issues have shifted research priorities towards underlying genes. It also shows how just a few genes, many of which span disciplines and disease areas, have dominated research.”
Source: Peter Kerpedjiev/NCBI-NLM
Source: Peter Kerpedjiev/NCBI-NLM [2].