City College of San Francisco Microbiology 12 Back to lecture outlines Microbial Genetics 1. Genetics is the study of informational macromolecules such as DNA and RNA and the unit of heredity known as the gene .
Genes are sequences of nucleotides within DNA that code for functional proteins.
The influenza viruses and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are important examples of RNA viruses. Prior to the development of the microscope how organisms carried out inheritence remained a mystery. This theory is not as crazy as it may first seem. In order for stable inheritance to occur there must be an organized flow of information, in the form of genes, from one generation to the next. Maybe that's why I love microbes.