Definition of "locus" []

• A locality; a place. (noun)
• A center or focus of great activity or intense concentration: "the cunning exploitation of loci of power; the insulation from normal American society” ( Clifton Fadiman). (noun)
• Mathematics The set or configuration of all points whose coordinates satisfy a single equation or one or more algebraic conditions. (noun)
• The position that a given gene occupies on a chromosome. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "We can argue about whether the White House or the Hill was the main locus of the madness, but it was truly mad."
• "The locus is a coalition of forty church congregations who battled the city of New York for vacant land in order to build owner-occupied row houses."
• "Kucherlapati, R.S. Insertion of DNA sequences into the human chromosomal beta-globin locus by homologous recombination."