• Question: what is a locus?

    Asked by emily8 to Anouk on 18 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Anouk Gouvras

      Anouk Gouvras answered on 18 Jun 2012:

      Hi Emily, good question

      The word locus means ‘place’ in latin (the plural is loci). In genetic language a locus is the specific location of a gene on a chromosome. The locus can be occupied by any of the alleles (variations) of that gene.

      An analogy, though am not sure if it is a good one, is if you think of a chromosome like a music album. Then the locus is the track number (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc) the gene is the name of the song on the track number and the allele is the variation of the song (a live song, a 2008 version, a cover of a song etc).

      With my work I look at ‘microsatellite’ loci. Which means I look at loci that have particular short repetitive DNA sequences.

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