Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

0-9

genetic code ... Gentile Da Fabriano

genetic code: the sequence of nucleotides in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) that determines the amino acid sequence of proteins. Though the linear sequence of nucleotides in DNA contains the information for protein sequences, proteins are not made directly from ...
genetic disease, human: any of the diseases and disorders that are caused by mutations in one or more genes.
genetic drift: a change in the gene pool of a small population that takes place strictly by chance. Genetic drift can result in genetic traits being lost from a population or becoming widespread in a population without respect to the survival or ...
genetic engineering: the artificial manipulation, modification, and recombination of DNA or other nucleic acid molecules in order to modify an organism or population of organisms.
genetics: study of heredity in general and of genes in particular.
genetics, human: study of the inheritance of characteristics by children from parents. Inheritance in humans does not differ in any fundamental way from that in other organisms.
Geneva: city, Ontario county, west-central New York, U.S. It lies at the northern end of Seneca Lake, in the Finger Lakes region, 48 miles (77 km) southeast of Rochester. The site, once part of the Pulteney Estate, was first settled in ...
Geneva: town, Adams county, eastern Indiana, U.S., on the Wabash River, 36 miles (58 km) northeast of Muncie. It was created in 1874 through the incorporation of the towns of Buffalo and Alexander and the Geneva train station (on the Grand ...
Geneva: city, capital of Geneve canton, in the far southwestern corner of Switzerland that juts into France. One of Europe's most cosmopolitan cities, Geneva has served as a model for republican government and owes its preeminence to the triumph of human, ...
Geneva Accords: collection of documents relating to Indochina and issuing from the Geneva Conference of April 26-July 21, 1954, attended by representatives of Cambodia, the People's Republic of China, France, Laos, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, the Viet ...
Geneva Bible: new translation of the Bible published in Geneva (New Testament, 1557; Old Testament, 1560) by a colony of Protestant scholars in exile from England who worked under the general direction of Miles Coverdale and John Knox and under the influence ...
Geneva Catechism: doctrinal confession prepared by John Calvin to instruct children in Reformed theology. Recognizing that his first catechism (1537) was too difficult for children, Calvin rewrote it. He arranged the Geneva Catechism (1542) in questions and answers in an effort to ...
Geneva City Conservatory and Botanical Gardens: major botanical research centre in Geneva, Switz., specializing in such areas as floristics, biosystematics, and morphology. Founded in 1817, the 19-hectare (47-acre) municipal garden cultivates about 15,000 species of plants; it has important collections of alpine plants and orchids, an ...
Geneva Conventions: a series of international treaties concluded in Geneva between 1864 and 1949 for the purpose of ameliorating the effects of war on soldiers and civilians. Two additional protocols to the 1949 agreement were approved in 1977.
Geneva mechanism: one of the most commonly used devices for producing intermittent rotary motion, characterized by alternate periods of motion and rest with no reversal in direction. It is also used for indexing (i.e., rotating a shaft through a prescribed angle).
Geneva, Academy of: private school of education founded at Geneva, Switz., in 1912 by a Swiss psychologist, Edouard Claparede, to advance child psychology and its application to education. A pioneer of scientific-realist education, Claparede believed that, as opposed to automatic learned performance or ...
Geneva, Lake: largest Alpine lake in Europe (area 224 square miles [581 square km]), lying between southwestern Switzerland and Haute-Savoie departement, southeastern France. About 134 square miles (347 square km) of the lake's area are Swiss, and 90 square miles (234 square ...
Geneve: canton, southwestern Switzerland. The canton lies between the Jura Mountains and the Alps and consists mainly of its capital, the city of Geneva (Geneve). It is one of the smallest cantons in the Swiss Confederation. Bordering on Vaud canton for ...
Genevieve, Saint: patron saint of Paris, who allegedly saved that city from the Huns.
Genghis Khan: Mongolian warrior-ruler, one of the most famous conquerors of history, who consolidated tribes into a unified Mongolia and then extended his empire across Asia to the Adriatic Sea.
genius: in psychology, a person of extraordinary intellectual power. The word genius is used in two closely related but somewhat different senses. In the first sense, as popularized by U.S. psychologist Lewis M. Terman, genius refers to high intellectual ability as ...
genius: in classical Roman times, an attendant spirit of a person or place.
genizah: in Judaism, a repository for timeworn sacred manuscripts and ritual objects, generally located in the attic or cellar of a synagogue. In the Middle Ages most synagogues had a genizah, because ceremonial burial (often with the remains of a pious, ...
Genje carpet: floor covering handwoven in Azerbaijan in or near the city of Ganca (also spelled Gendje or Ganja; in the Soviet era it was named Kirovabad, and under Imperial Russia, Yelizavetpol). The carpets are characterized by simple, angular designs and saturated ...
Genk: municipality, Limburg province, northeastern Belgium, on the edge of the Kempenland (Campine) Plateau, north of Liege. Formerly a market centre and holiday resort with scenic marshes and woods (including the Bokrijk Nature Reserve), it has become industrialized with the discovery ...
Gennadios II Scholarios: first patriarch of Constantinople (1454-64) under Turkish rule and the foremost Greek Orthodox Aristotelian theologian and polemicist of his time. Scholarios became expert in European philosophy and theology and was called "the Latinist" derisively by his colleagues. He also taught ...
Gennadius I of Constantinople, Saint: Byzantine theologian, biblical exegete, and patriarch, a champion of Christian Orthodoxy who strove for an ecumenical (Greek: "universal") statement of doctrine on the person and work of Christ to reconcile the opposing Alexandrian (Egyptian) and Antiochene (Syrian) theological traditions.
Gennadius Of Marseilles: theologian-priest whose work De viris illustribus ("On Famous Men") constitutes the sole source for biographical and bibliographical information on numerous early Eastern and Western Christian authors.
Gennadius Of Novgorod: Russian Orthodox archbishop of Novgorod, Russia, whose leadership in suppressing Judaizing Christian sects occasioned his editing the first Russian translation of the Bible.
Gennep, Arnold van: French ethnographer and folklorist, best known for his studies of the rites of passage of various cultures.
Gennes, Pierre-Gilles de: French physicist, who was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discoveries about the ordering of molecules in liquid crystals and polymers.
Genoa: unincorporated town, Douglas county, western Nevada, U.S., west of the Carson River and east of Lake Tahoe, 12 miles (19 km) south-southwest of Carson City. Genoa is the oldest permanent settlement in Nevada. It was founded in 1851 as a ...
Genoa: city and Mediterranean seaport in northwestern Italy. It is the capital of Genova provincia and of Liguria regione and is the centre of the Italian Riviera. Its total area is 93 square miles (240 square km).
Genoa, Conference of: (April 10-May 19, 1922), post-World War I meeting at Genoa, Italy, to discuss the economic reconstruction of central and eastern Europe and to explore ways to improve relations between Soviet Russia and European capitalist regimes.
Genoa, Gulf of: northern portion of the Ligurian Sea (an inlet of the Mediterranean Sea), extending eastward around the northwest coast of Italy for 90 miles (145 km), from Imperia to La Spezia. It receives the Magra, Roia, Centa, and Taggia rivers and ...
genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. The term, derived from the Greek genos ("race," "tribe," or "nation") and the Latin cide ("killing"), ...
Genoese lace: bobbin lace made at Genoa, Italy, from the second half of the 16th century; it developed from the earlier knotted fringe called punto a groppo. The early laces (merletti a piombini, "laces made with lead weights") were used for the ...
genotype: the genetic constitution of an organism. The genotype determines the hereditary potentials and limitations of an individual from embryonic formation through adulthood. Among organisms that reproduce sexually, an individual's genotype comprises the entire complex of genes inherited from both parents. ...
Genovese, Vito: one of the most powerful of American crime syndicate bosses from the 1930s to the 1950s and a major influence even from prison, 1959-69.
Genovesi, Antonio: Italian philosopher and economist whose proposals for reforms in the Kingdom of Naples combined humanist ideas with a radical Christian metaphysical system.
genre: a distinctive type or category of literary composition, such as the epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, and short story.
genre painting: painting of scenes from everyday life, of ordinary people in work or recreation, depicted in a generally realistic manner. Genre art contrasts with that of landscape, portraiture, still life, religious themes, historic events, or any kind of traditionally idealized subject ...
genro: ("principal elders"), extraconstitutional oligarchy that dominated the Japanese government from the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution (1889) to the early 1930s. The genro were men who had played a leading role in the 1868 Meiji Restoration (the overthrow of feudal ...
Genroku period: in Japanese history, era from 1688 to 1704, characterized by a rapidly expanding commercial economy and the development of a vibrant urban culture centred in the cities of Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo (Tokyo). The growth of the cities was a ...
Genscher, Hans-Dietrich: chairman (1974-85) of the West German Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei; FDP) and foreign minister (1974-92) in both Social Democratic Party and Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union ministries, before and after German unification in 1990.
genteel comedy: early 18th-century subgenre of the comedy of manners that reflected the behaviour of the British upper class. Contrasted with Restoration comedy, genteel comedy was somewhat artificial and sentimental. Colley Cibber's play The Careless Husband (1704) is an example of the ...
gentian: (genus Gentiana), any of about 400 species of annual or perennial (rarely biennial) flowering plants of the family Gentianaceae distributed worldwide in temperate and alpine regions, especially in Europe and Asia, North and South America, and New Zealand. They are ...
Gentianaceae: the gentian family of the flowering plant order Gentianales, containing about 75 genera and about 1,100 species of annual and perennial herbs and, rarely, shrubs, native primarily to northern temperate areas of the world. Members of the family have leaves ...
Gentianales: gentian order of flowering plants, belonging to the class Magnoliopsida (the dicotyledons). It is composed of 6 families and approximately 5,500 species, although up to 11 families and 12,000 species have been recognized, depending on the classification used. Four large ...
Gentil, Emile: French colonial administrator who explored the areas of the present Congo (Brazzaville), Central African Republic, and Chad and helped establish French rule in equatorial Africa.
Gentile Da Fabriano: foremost painter of central Italy at the beginning of the 15th century, whose few surviving works are among the finest examples of the International Gothic style.