DNA, genes and genomes

Introduction

Carried within almost every one of our hundreds of trillions of cells is a complete set of instructions for making a human being. These instructions are in the form of a chemical code.

The structure of the code is deceptively simple, and yet it includes all of the instructions required to make a living thing: a human, or a cauliflower, or a tree frog, or whatever.

The following pages will give you an insight into:

• how our complete set of instructions (our genome) is encoded into a threadlike chemical (DNA);
• which parts of the DNA are read by our cells to make us function (genes); and
• what understanding this might tell us ...