3. How do genes control the functioning of cells and our characteristics?

Basically gene produces a functional product such as a protein which regulates the functioning of our cells via carrying out different processess.

Explanation:

Genes are short segments of our DNA that code for functional products such as proteins. Proteins basically do everything in your cells and your phenotype (what you look like and how you cells behave) everything is controlled by these functional products that a gene makes.

A gene is a short section of DNA. your genes contain instructions that tell your cells to make molecules called protein