The study provides an analysis of theoretical approaches to the study of concepts in various fields of humanities. The prevailing understanding of concepts as units of language in the works of linguists, the recognition of the presence of concepts of figurative and value aspects by linguistic and cultural experts is shown. A number of characteristics of the concept as a “cultural gene” are defined, including: the unity of the supra-personal meaning and its individualized discrete manifestations; invariant semantic core and irregularly “attached” meanings. Referring to the example of life and death concepts in the Chinese culture, the author shows that the deformation or deactivation of the invariant meanings of the concept indicates the erosion of culture boundaries and identity loss.