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In genetics
Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding....
, a centimorgan (abbreviated cM) or map unit (m.u.) is a unit of recombinant frequency for measuring genetic linkage
Genetic linkage

Genetic linkage occurs when particular genetic Locus or alleles for genes are inherited jointly. Genetic loci on the same chromosome are physically connected and tend to stay together during meiosis, and are thus genetically linked....
. It is often used to imply distance along a chromosome
Chromosome

A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein that is found in Cell . A chromosome is a single piece of DNA that contains many genes, regulatory sequence and other genetic sequence....
. The number of base-pairs it corresponds to varies widely across the genome
Genome

In classical genetics, the genome of a diploid organism including eukarya refers to a full set of chromosomes or genes in a gamete; thereby, a regular somatic cell contains two full sets of genomes....
 (different regions of a chromosome have different propensities towards crossover), and is about 1 million base pairs in humans . The centimorgan is equal to a 1% chance that a marker at one genetic locus
Locus (genetics)

In the fields of genetics and evolutionary computation, a locus is a fixed position on a chromosome such as the position of a genetic marker that may be occupied by one or more genes....
 on a chromosome will be separated from a marker at a second locus due to crossing over
Chromosomal crossover

Chromosomal crossover is the process by which two chromosomes pair up and exchange sections of their DNA. This often occurs during prophase 1 of meiosis in a process called synapsis....
 in a single generation.






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In genetics
Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding....
, a centimorgan (abbreviated cM) or map unit (m.u.) is a unit of recombinant frequency for measuring genetic linkage
Genetic linkage

Genetic linkage occurs when particular genetic Locus or alleles for genes are inherited jointly. Genetic loci on the same chromosome are physically connected and tend to stay together during meiosis, and are thus genetically linked....
. It is often used to imply distance along a chromosome
Chromosome

A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein that is found in Cell . A chromosome is a single piece of DNA that contains many genes, regulatory sequence and other genetic sequence....
. The number of base-pairs it corresponds to varies widely across the genome
Genome

In classical genetics, the genome of a diploid organism including eukarya refers to a full set of chromosomes or genes in a gamete; thereby, a regular somatic cell contains two full sets of genomes....
 (different regions of a chromosome have different propensities towards crossover), and is about 1 million base pairs in humans . The centimorgan is equal to a 1% chance that a marker at one genetic locus
Locus (genetics)

In the fields of genetics and evolutionary computation, a locus is a fixed position on a chromosome such as the position of a genetic marker that may be occupied by one or more genes....
 on a chromosome will be separated from a marker at a second locus due to crossing over
Chromosomal crossover

Chromosomal crossover is the process by which two chromosomes pair up and exchange sections of their DNA. This often occurs during prophase 1 of meiosis in a process called synapsis....
 in a single generation. Plasmodium falciparum
Plasmodium falciparum

Plasmodium falciparum is a protozoan parasite, one of the species of Plasmodium that cause malaria in humans. It is transmitted by the female...
 has an average recombination distance of ~15 kb per centimorgan: markers separated by 15 kb of DNA (15,000 nucleotides) have a 1% chance of being separated by crossing over in a single generation. Note that non-syntenic
Synteny

In classical genetics, synteny describes the physical co-localization of Locus on the same chromosome within an individual or species. The concept is related to genetic linkage: Linkage between two loci is established by the observation of lower-than-expected recombination frequencies between two or more loci....
 genes are inherently unlinked, and cM distances have no meaning between them.

The centimorgan was named in honor of geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan

Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American genetics and Embryology. Morgan received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1890 and researched embryology during his tenure at Bryn Mawr College....
 by his student Alfred Henry Sturtevant. Note that the parent unit of the centimorgan, the morgan
List of strange units of measurement

This article describes unusual units of measurement that are sometimes used by anglophone scientists, especially physicists and mathematicians, and other technically-minded people such as engineers and programmers, as bits of dry humor combined with putative practical convenience....
, is rarely used today.