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Factor

(Science: pharmacology) Any of several substances or activities that are necessary to produce a result, for example a coagulation factor.

Often, use of the term factor indicates that the chemical nature of the substance or its mechanism of action is unknown, as in endocrinology, where factors are renamed as hormones when their chemical nature is determined. (genetics) a segment of dna that is involved in producing a polypeptide chain; it can include regions preceding and following the coding dna as well as introns between the exons; it is considered a unit of heredity; genes were formerly called factors.