This isn't a strong 1:1 mapping. Genes are not horoscopes! No gene works in a vacuum. Genes code for proteins that work together to perform diverse functions.

This isn't a strong 1:1 mapping. Genes are not horoscopes! No gene works in a vacuum. Genes code for proteins that work together to perform diverse functions. Sure: in some situations you can indeed directly identify that a gene knock out or substitution might affect certain functions, but this is rather misleading! Genetics is actually very much Turing complete and Genes might best be looked at as a kind of software (this might be considered an understatement). For comparison: I'm sure we agree that a single machine code instruction by itself is meaningless. However, if you knock out or add a JSR (Jump to SubRoutine aka function call) at the right spot: sure you can claim that the JSR codes for a particular functionality. But: JSR is 3 bytes on a 6502, would you really believe someone who told you that 3 bytes is what it takes to "make Mario jump"? In reality there's a lot more instructions behind it (with perhaps calls to further subroutines, and more subroutines past that). Genes are not quite 6502 code of course, if anything they're rather more sophisticated. To look at some of your examples: You mention eye color which is determined by quite a number of genes working together (eg. location, color select, pigment) . Height is affected by ... almost everything all at once over a longer period of time (eating, sleeping, age, eating at a particular age, metabolic rate : which itself is fairly sophisticated... there's wall charts that span an entire room). This to the point where some people give up and say "height is actually mostly environmentally determined". (Of course in reality it's an interaction between Genes and environment) Vulnerability and immunity to diseases is very interesting indeed, if you eg. look at the role of somatic hypermutation in acquired immunity. And all of these would obviously not work without working cells with DNA transcription, metabolism, membranes, replication, etc. ;-) In short: be a little bit careful with claims in newspapers that say people have found a "Gene for X".