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 are small sections of DNA within the genome that code for proteins. They contain the instructions for our individual characteristics â like eye and hair colour. 1  A gene is a small section of DNA that contains the instructions for a specific molecule, usually a protein.2  The purpose of genes is to store information. 3  Each gene contains the information required to build specific proteins needed in an organism. 4  The 5  ... G In humans, alleles of particular genes come in pairs, one on each chromosome (we have 23 pairs of chromosomes). 2  If the alleles of a particular gene are the same, the organism is described as homozygous for that gene. 3  If they are different the organism is described as heterozygous for that gene.