The concept of what constitutes a gene has evolved over time as scientific understanding has increased. Early definitions from the 1860s-1900s viewed a gene as a discrete unit of heredity. In the 1910s, genes were defined by their location and ability to mutate and recombine. From the 1940s-1950s, the one gene-one polypeptide view emerged. By the 1960s, genes were defined by their transcribed genetic code. Later definitions incorporated cloning, sequencing, and computational analysis to define genes as open reading frames. Currently, a gene is defined as the union of genomic sequences that encode a coherent set of potentially overlapping functional products, either proteins or RNAs. This renewed definition accounts for complexities discovered