Genome and DNA - whats the correlation

Question

[scienceforums]

1- When we call Human Genome, do we mean only the portion of DNA that codes for Protein (which estimates 20,000 to 26000), or we mean all the DNA (coding & non coding)

2- Do All Genes code for protein? (if Not, why call it a gene?)

3- What is gene actually? anything that codes for protein or liable for a human Trait, or gene has other functions?

Answer 1

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

1) we mean the whole genome, including the intergenic regions

2) No. what's a gene ? https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/basics/gene

3) https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/basics/gene; "What is a gene, post-ENCODE? History and updated definition." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17567988 ;

[scienceforums]

Thanks, when we say, 'it was originally suggested that over 98% of the human genome does not encode protein sequences, including most sequences within introns and most intergenic DNA, while 20% of a typical prokaryote genome is noncoding." DO we mean only 98% of 20,000 Genes we found?

[JC]

No, that means that 98% of the genome is not encoding genes, only 2% and that is the 20,000 coding genes

[scienceforums]

thank u very much, the problem I had was with the term 'GENOME'- it sounds like a "gene". So, u r saying 98% GENOME is non-coding, only 2% of our Genome is GENES (20,000 Genes), am I right? That means the non-coding portion (98%) is also within Human Genome ?

Does this 98% non-coding genome also includes non-coding portion within the genes (20,000) ?

[JC]

Yes and yes. Genome is all DNA which defines (and it's inherited by) an organism, so it includes everything, genes (coding and non-coding) and everything else (regulatory regions, pseudogenes, repetitive regions and "junk" DNA). The word is a combination of GENe and chromosOME.

[scienceforums]

thnk u very much, its much clearer now, the term GENOME was bugging me. Are they (regulatory regions, pseudogenes, repetitive regions and "junk" DNA) outside Gene? I also knw there is non-coding portion within A Gene (intron ).

[JC]

Yes and no, some genes can be just a continuous region (like in virus or bacteria) and anything that falls inside can potentially break the gene. In eukaryotes, genes are more complex, it can be several exons than can span several kilobases (introns), inside introns you can have other genes, repetitive regions, control regions, ...

Biology can be complex, I suggest you read some molecular biology books, Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts is a great book.