What's the difference between genes and DNA?

Good question!

Before I try to answer it, have a look at this quick resource explaining the differences between genes and DNA.

In essence, a DNA molecule contains several genes. A gene is a short section of a DNA molecule.

In other words, each gene is a portion of a long DNA molecule.

You can think of a DNA molecule as a very long train, with each gene being a different wagon.

But here's how it actually looks like:
(Image: Chromosome-DNA-gene) Image source: Wikipedia

This is another resource with good information regarding the differences between genes and DNA.

The terms "genes" and "DNA" are often used interchangeably, because as you've just seen genes are made of DNA material, and DNA molecules are made of genes!

In future, where you haven't heard of a difficult term or a concept before, you'll want to quickly search it in Wikipedia. For example, here's the definition of "gene": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene and here's the definition of "DNA": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA

AUTHOR: Alex Ruani, Research Director

Updated on: 29/10/2026