Weil is less enthusiastic about white, or button, mushrooms, a species of mushroom that also includes Portobellos and criminis. âButton mushrooms do possess some health benefits, but not the general health benefits found in Asian mushrooms,â Weil says.
What sort of information do they encode, and how can this affect a cell's characteristics and activities? Some genes enable cells to make proteins needed for basic functions; dubbed housekeeping genes, they are active in many types of cells. Other genes, however, are inactive most of the time. Some genes play a role in early development of the embryo and are then shut down forever. Many genes encode proteins that are unique to a particular kind of cell and that give the cell its character - making a brain cell, say, different from a bone cell. A normal cell activates just the genes it needs at the moment and actively suppresses the rest.
GENES. A gene is a small piece of the genome. It's the genetic equivalent of the atom: As an atom is the fundamental unit of matter, a gene is the fundamental unit of heredity. Genes are found on chromosomes and are made of DNA. Different genes determine the different characteristics, or traits, of an organism.ll individuals in a species have the same set of genes: in peas there is a gene for pod color, a gene for plant height, a gene for pea shape, and so on. What makes individuals different is that a gene can have several different forms, or alleles.