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.
Each gene is a specific segment of DNA, occupying a fixed place on a chromosome. Genes contain the chemical information needed to create different kinds of proteins. These proteins are used to repair cells and make new ones. gene may determine a characteristic of an individual by specifying a polypeptide chain that forms a protein or part of a protein (structural gene); or encode an RNA molecule; or regulate the operation of other genes or repress such operation.