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Alleles are variant forms of a gene that differ in sequence information.
What Are Alleles at Genetic Level?
The term allele refers to variant forms of a gene. A gene can be considered as any stretch of the DNA that gets transcribed, i.e., gets converted to RNA. So, a gene is basically a sequence of nucleotides that is characterized by its specific loci or position in the genome.
The nucleotide sequence information of a gene can have variants and each variant of the gene having a different sequence is referred to as an allelic form or allele of the gene.
A gene may have a single or multiple allelic forms.
How Do Allelic Forms Arise?
Allelic variants arise due to mutations, i.e., changes in the sequence information (Watson 2014). Suppose a gene has a single allelic form having a particular sequence. In course of time, the sequence can get changed due to variety of factors, and the new form with the changed sequence is considered as a new allelic form of...
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References
Futuyma, D. (2006). Evolutionary biology (3rd ed.). New York: W.H. Freeman.
Hartl, D. (2012). Essential genetics: A genomics perspective (6th ed.). Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Hartl, D., & Clark, A. (2007). Principles of population genetics (1st ed.). Sunderland: Sinauer Associates.
Snustad, D., & Simmons, M. (2003). Principles of genetics (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Watson, J. (2014). Molecular biology of the gene (7th ed.). San Francisco: Pearson Education.
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Jaiswal, D. (2017). Alleles. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_29-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_29-1
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