 Looking at the history and the etymology of a term does not, of course, necessarily tell us a lot about how it is used in the context of current science. So what is a genome in today’s life sciences? Is it the (haploid) set of chromosomes we find in the nucleus of a eukaryotic cell, in line with the original definition by Winkler? Or is it the totality of genes we find in an organism or the totality of DNA present in a cell? And if so, which DNA? Most definitions that are currently in circulation are an intricate mix of different ways of approaching the issue. This can be illustrated by looking at the definitions given in several key online resources (for more definitions of the term ‘genome’ see Table 1 in Keller 2011).