genome

American  

[jee-nohm] / ˈdʒi noʊm /

Also genom

noun

Genetics.

• genomes
  plural

1. a full set of chromosomes; all the inheritable traits of an organism.

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genome British  

/ ˈdʒiːnəʊm, dʒɪˈnɒmɪk /

noun

1. the full complement of genetic material within an organism

2. all the genes comprising a haploid set of chromosomes

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genome Scientific  

/ jē′nōm /

1. The total amount of genetic information in the chromosomes of an organism, including its genes and DNA sequences. The genome of eukaryotes is made up of a single, haploid set of chromosomes that is contained in the nucleus of every cell and exists in two copies in all cells except reproductive and red blood cells. The human genome is made up of about 20,000 to 25,000 genes.

2. Compare proteome

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genome Cultural  

1. The sum of all information contained in the DNA for any living thing. The sequence of all the nucleotides in all the chromosomes of an organism.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• genomic
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• genomes
  plural

Etymology

Origin of genome

First recorded in 1925–30; from German Genom, from Gen gene + (Chromos)om chromosome

Explanation

The human genome is the map of your DNA, the double helix that contains all your genes. Your genome is all the genetic material contained in your 23 pairs of chromosomes, a total of more than 20,000 genes. Every organism has its own unique genome. "The Human Genome Project," completed in 2003, was an international effort to identify all the genes in human DNA and to determine the sequences of the 3 billion (yes, billion) base pairs — the smaller units that make up DNA. It took 13 years. Genome research has helped diagnose disease and find genetic markers for certain diseases.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

genome genomes

Evolutionary genome topology focuses on the arrangement and structure of genomes rather than relying only on DNA sequences.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 25, 2026

The system can also simulate possible future directions of genome evolution.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 25, 2026

"Surprisingly, we discovered this collapse happens at every level of genome organization -- compartments, domains, and chromatin loops."

From Science Daily ● Aug. 13, 2026

They said it was no longer a question of "whether generative viral genome design will exist" but whether it can be used without "enabling serious harm".

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026

The genome was an active blueprint—capable of deploying selected parts of its code at different times and in different circumstances.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Researchers are using species recently approved for human consumption as models and comparing the genomes of farmed insects with those of pre-domestication individuals preserved in entomological collections.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026

When the team examined animal genomes more broadly, they found related enzymes in more than 66 species spanning nine different phyla.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 17, 2026

The researchers used their model to generate genomes based on the template virus and then synthesized the DNA and put the AI-generated viruses into bacterial cells.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026

It is the first time whole genomes have been successfully designed by AI.

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026

As Muller thought about the future of eugenics and the possibility of altering human genomes, he wondered whether Galton and his collaborators had made a fundamental conceptual error.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee