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Glossary Term
Glossary Term Gene
Definition The basic unit of heredity; a portion of DNA that (usually) codes for a protein product.
See also Central Dogma.
In MGI, "gene" may be used to refer to any of the following:
  1. A locus in the cytoplasmic or nuclear genome characterized by an altered phenotype or by an effect on an inserted reporter gene, such as a gene trap or enhancer trap.
  2. A locus in the cytoplasmic or nuclear genome that is necessary and sufficient to express the complete complement of functional products derived from a unit of transcription.
  3. A locus in the cytoplasmic or nuclear genome identified by hybridization to a nucleic acid segment derived from a non-mouse species, where the segment used as probe represents some portion of a functional unit of transcription in the cytoplasmic or nuclear genome of the non-mouse species.
  4. An exon-encoding segment of the germ-line nuclear genome located within a region that undergoes somatic rearrangement.
  5. A locus in the cytoplasmic or nuclear genome that is within an intron of (but not, itself, an exon of) a unit of transcription, which gives rise to a functional product upon transcript processing of the host unit. For example, Rnu73a and Rnu73b are contained in introns of Rsp3a.
Contributing Projects:
Mouse Genome Database (MGD), Gene Expression Database (GXD), Mouse Models of Human Cancer database (MMHCdb) (formerly Mouse Tumor Biology (MTB)), Gene Ontology (GO)
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04/16/2024
MGI 6.23 		The Jackson Laboratory