Sokolowski – gene 

A gene is a very long piece of DNA, so each of our chromosomes have long pieces of DNA, like a very, very, very long hair and it gets wrapped up together and that’s our chromosome. And when we look, stretch out that long piece of DNA and divide it up, there’s genes that are made of that DNA, so at one part of that long hair is the beginning of the gene, and one is the end of the gene. So the gene is a piece of our DNA and they’re along this hair like beads on a string, and each of our chromosomes have a series of genes that are on them. And those genes may encode for, may contribute to differences in eye colour, differences in whether you have a hitchhiker’s thumb or not, I don’t, you can look at your thumb, some of them bend back a little more. Whether your earlobes are attached or not, whether you can roll your tongue, which I can, others can’t. And so these genes can influence variation in those traits, and so you may have a gene that influences one of those traits, like whether you can roll your tongue or not, and that’s one gene that is encoding tongue rolling, and one person may have one variant or one form of the gene, which is to roll your tongue, and one another may have the other variant of the gene, which is to not roll your tongue. And so for traits like that, the gene in a way determines the outcome, but for most other traits: behavioural traits, developmental traits, there is not a one-to-one relationship between the gene and the trait.