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.
Many of these things are passed from one generation to the next in a family by genes. What Is a Gene? Each cell in the human body contains about 25,000 to 35,000 genes. Genes carry the information that determines your traits (say: trates), which are features or characteristics that are passed on to you â or inherited â from your parents. For example, if both of your parents have green eyes, you might inherit the trait for green eyes from them.