The phrase "a class of genes" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in scientific or academic contexts when discussing a specific group or category of genes that share common characteristics or functions.
Example: "Researchers have identified a class of genes that are responsible for regulating cell growth and division."
Alternatives: "a category of genes" or "a group of genes".
The research, published in the journal Cell Reports on Thursday, concerns a class of genes called the APOBEC family.
Gene regulation of this sort is especially significant in a class of genes known as imprinting genes, which play a crucial role in fetal development.
Tumour suppressor gene, also called antioncogene, any of a class of genes that are normally involved in regulating cell growth but that may become cancer-causing when damaged.
A group of researchers at the University of California, San Diego recently reported, for example, that mutations in a class of genes dubbed Tweedle — as in Tweedledee and Tweedledum — can alter the overall shape of fruit flies; a mutated "TweedleD," the scientists noted, produced "short and stout" flies.
In advancing the concept of gene complexes that they called operons, Jacob and Monod postulated the existence of a class of genes that regulate the function of other genes by affecting the synthesis of messenger RNA.
Now, a study identifies a class of genes that determines exactly where and when these hormones are released.
In planarians, three major classes of wound-induced genes that are expressed in differentiated tissues (W1, W2 and W3 genes) and a class of genes induced in neoblasts (W4 genes) have been identified, which constitute a molecular wound response program to elicit regeneration (Wenemoser et al., 2012).
Over the 5 years of his postdoc, Antebi demonstrated that mig-7 belongs to a class of genes that determine when other genes that spur developmental events switch on and off; mutations in mig-7, he found, alter the worm's progression through the third stage of larval growth.
But following the onset of leukemia in some trials (ScienceNOW, 7 March 2005), scientists began to wonder whether IL2RG or another viral gene was inserting itself in the patients' DNA in a way that disrupted a class of genes called oncogenes, which can cause cancer if mutated.
Therefore, this cluster of Ugt5 genes belongs to a class of genes that are alternatively polyadenylated [30].
Our phylogenetic analysis suggests that YER067W belongs to a class of genes that are particularly interesting for studying the genetics of evolutionary divergence, the slowly evolving orphan genes.
