The concept of a gene continues to be refined as new phenomena are discovered. For example, regulatory regions of a gene can be far removed from <answer>its coding regions</answer>, and coding regions can be split into several exons. Some viruses store their genome in RNA instead of DNA and some gene products are functional non-coding RNAs. Therefore, a broad, modern working definition of a gene is any discrete locus of heritable, genomic sequence which affect an organism's traits by being expressed as a functional product or by regulation of gene expression.
What can regulatory regions of a gene be far removed from?
its coding regions