What is the relationship between DNA, genes, chromosomes, etc?
In: Biology
You can imagine DNA as a really long string made up of the same four elements repeated over and over again. For simplicity, we can call those elements A, G, C, or T. These longs strands are a code which tells our body how to make the proteins that make our body work. So while we would just see a long list of four letters, our body sees a clear set of instructions.
In your cells, you have 46 of these strands: 23 from each parent. Each individual strand is called a chromosome. Each chromosome holds the instructions for thousands of different proteins. The instructions for a specific protein is called a gene. Everyone has the same basic set of genes, but every individual has specific “versions” of each gene. For example, you and I both have a gene for eye color, but my version of that gene may give me blue eyes, while yours gives you brown eyes.
Specific genes are found on specific chromosomes. Since you get one copy of each chromosome from each parent, you get two versions of each gene. The unique combination of these versions is what makes us similar but different from each of our parents.
TLDR: Chromosomes are long strings of DNA which each hold thousands of genes
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