A broad operational definition is sometimes used to encompass the complexity of these diverse phenomena, where a gene is defined as <answer>a union of genomic sequences encoding a coherent set of potentially overlapping functional products</answer>. This definition categorizes genes by their functional products (proteins or RNA) rather than their specific DNA loci, with regulatory elements classified as gene-associated regions.
What is the broad operational definition of a gene?
a union of genomic sequences encoding a coherent set of potentially overlapping functional products