Welcome to BioBIKE's tutorial
What is a Gene?

Introduction

You'll be going back and forth between this window and CyanoBIKE, an instance of BioBIKE, and can make your life easier by arranging the two windows so that their both visible at the same time, perhaps a half a screen each (up and down). On the other hand, if you're skilled moving between windows, CyanoBIKE will look better within a full screen. You decide.

The one format that probably will work out badly is a single screen, this one, reading through the tour with no attempt to follow along with your own fingers in CyanoBIKE. Don't try it! Go to BioBIKE, click the public link to CyanoBIKE (VCU mirror), login (no password necessary), and join in the fun.

Our Story
You may have trouble finding a matching pair of socks in the morning. Well, think about finding a gene amongst the few billion nucleotides that comprise the human genome! In this tour, we'll confront the problem of how to find a gene, which will lead us to the question: What exactly is a gene?

To answer this question, we have to look at real sequences and real genes. Perhaps some generalities will pop out that enable us to come up with a definition.

Tour Overview

  1. Preliminaries: Genes and gene coordinates
  2. What is the beginning of a gene?
  3. What determines the beginning of a protein-encoding gene?
  4. What is the end of a gene?
  5. Final comment