1 the set of exogenic (physical, chemical and biological) processes that alter the physical and chemical state of rocks at or near the earth's surface.  intensity of most weathering decreases with depth, because variations in temperature and moistures decrease with depth.
A gene is a segment of nucleic acid that contains the information necessary to produce a functional product, usually a protein. Genes consist of a long strand of DNA (RNA in some viruses) that contains a promoter, which controls the activity of a gene, and a coding sequence, which determines what the gene produces.
But the genes in your DNA don't make protein directly. Instead, special proteins called enzymes read and copy (or transcribe) the DNA code. The segment of DNA to be transcribed gets unzipped by an enzyme, which uses the DNA as a template to build a single-stranded molecule of RNA.