What is a gene and how is it related to chromosomes?

Answer 1

Chromosomes are DNA + histone molecules (chromatin) tightly wound up to form sort of a sausage-like structure. Chromatin is made up of DNA and genes are essentially just sections of DNA which contain certain nitrogenous base pairs (Adenine, Thymine, Guanine, Cytosine) these nitrogenous pairs make up a sequence. The cell reads these sequences in 3 nucleotides at a time. These groups of 3 are known as codons, now imagine the codons are each 3 letter words that the cell must read, each codon produces an amino acid and 1 gene can contain several codons producing amino acids that combine into a protein. Chromosome = Made of Chromatin = Made of DNA = Of which sections are known as genes = each gene can be seen as a sentence with a bunch of 3 letter 'words' known as codons.