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 /

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

Researchers also computationally reconstructed the genome of the ancient ancestor shared by all living bats.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 30, 2026

Even before the human genome was fully sequenced, the biologist Sydney Brenner said that with a complete DNA sequence and a sufficiently large computer, he could “compute the organism.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2026

During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers could follow individual variants in remarkable detail because genome sequences were usually linked to precise dates.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026

"These findings demonstrate a critical need for studying gene regulation and genome organization to gain a mechanistic understanding of the aging process."

From Science Daily ● Sep. 15, 2026

Built into every genome, then, are the codes for proteins that will allow that genome to reproduce.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Rather than simply carrying extra copies of the same genes, the plants gradually transformed those duplicated genomes into something different.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 23, 2026

To investigate, the researchers analyzed the genomes of three Clusia species with different CAM phenotypes: Clusia rosea, Clusia minor, and Clusia major.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 23, 2026

The team reconstructed 26 genomes of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, from human remains recovered at 11 archaeological sites in Estonia, Russia, England, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026

Their work represents the first systematic attempt to connect nearly all plague genomes currently available from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries with outbreaks described in historical records.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026

The similarities between genomes must explain the likeness between parents and their children, and mutations and recombination might explain their differences.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee