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Competition

How long is your DNA?

Why the supplied answers are incorrect (or correct):

  1. 2 meters of DNA that is only about 6 μm in diameter is crammed inside the nucleus of a single human cell: This is geometrically equivalent to packing 40 km (24 miles) of extremely fine thread into a tennis ball!
  2. There are 30,000 genes in your DNA plus noncoding or junk DNA
  3. If written out in A,G,T,C letter code your DNA would ONLY fill 1 million A4 sized pages
  4. CORRECT ANSWER! The DNA from one cell in your body would be 2 metres long (reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26834/ AND https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6391780/ )
  5. In terms of computer information if coded in binary: 1 million Gigabytes per 1g of DNA
  6. Close – each cell of our body contains DNA packaged into chromosomes. We get 23 chromosomes from our mother and 23 from our father – so the total in one cell is 46 chromosomes
  7. Close: if you look at just one human chromosome (Chromosome 21) it would be 1.5 cm long
  8. The DNA from every cell in your body would stretch across our solar system at least TWICE
  9. One human cell contains 3.2 × 10^9 nucleotides (base pairs) with is 3.2 billion
  10. Some say it’s 6000 times but one calculation puts it at 260,000 times. Reference: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10606/length-of-uncoiled-human-dna