Gendosis

Gendosis is a term used in some discussions of genetics to denote the regulatory processes by which organisms monitor and adjust gene dosage—the effective number of gene copies expressed in a cell—and translate copy-number variation into appropriate gene expression levels.

Etymology: the word is formed from gene and dosage, with the -osis suffix indicating a process.

Conceptually, gendosis is not a single mechanism but an umbrella concept intended to encompass dosage compensation, gene-dosage sensitivity, and feedback controls that normalize transcription and chromatin states across genomic regions.

Mechanisms associated with gendosis include dosage compensation across sex chromosomes, such as X-inactivation and upregulation of gene expression to balance dosage between sexes; regulation in response to copy-number variation (CNVs) with transcriptional tuning; and chromatin remodeling and epigenetic modifications that adjust expression in response to gene copy-number changes, as well as controls on mRNA stability.

Applications and implications of this concept lie in explaining why certain CNVs have mild phenotypes while others cause disease, and in informing studies of aneuploidy, developmental disorders, and cancer. The term is not widely adopted in the scientific literature; it remains a conceptual umbrella rather than a defined pathway, with researchers typically focusing on the established mechanisms of dosage compensation, gene dosage sensitivity, and related regulatory processes.

See also gene dosage, dosage compensation, copy-number variation, haploinsufficiency, epigenetics.