Question

What is the meaning of ‘gen’? (Eg: Antigen)

Answer 1

Hint: The meaning of the word having ‘gen’, either as a suffix or a prefix, and deduce the common part in their meanings. The words can be carcinogen, antigen, and genes.

Complete answer: The term ‘generate’ means to produce or to form something. ‘Gen’ on the other hand can be thought of as an abbreviated version of the word generate. In French the word that means ‘to generate’ is gène, in Greek it is genēs and in Latin it is a genus. All of these words mean ‘to be born’ or ‘to be produced’ and have ‘gen’ as common in them.
The word ‘gen’ is derived from the above-listed words and its meaning is to produce, generate or synthesize, to stimulate the production of something, and to induce something.
In this word ‘Anti’ means opposite and ‘gen’ means to produce. So, Antigens are the foreign substance that induces immune responses in our body by stimulating the production of antibodies against it. Antibodies are antagonists to antigens and block their product synthesis.
Another example, for the use and meaning of ‘gen’ is Carcinogen. So, here ‘carcino’ means cancer or crab and ‘gen’ means forming. So the term carcinogen means a substance that can cause cancer formation.

Note: The word ‘gen’ is used in many terms in biology as a suffix that adds to the terms the meaning of generating something. The initials of words with a suffix as ‘gen’ decides the function or process the word is related to. Some examples of biological words having ‘gen’ are hydrogen, oxygen, immunogen, etc.