# Fun fact about DNA length



## lonelyjew (Jan 20, 2010)

Each cell contains about 3billion base pairs in a haploid genome, that turns out to stretch to 2.3 meters when completely relaxed and stretched out. Humans have 100 trillion cells within them. That means, if you stretch out all of the DNA inside you, end to end, you end up with 230 Billion kilometers of DNA. The average distance from Pluto the the Sun is 5.9 billion kilometers. It takes almost 9 days to travel this distance at the speed of light.

Appreciate how awesome cells are at compacting DNA from the helix, into supercoiled DNA, into nucleosomes, into rosettes, into coils, into chromatids, and into chromosomes.


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## kiirby (Oct 8, 2010)

DNA is ingeneius.


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## farfegnugen (Aug 16, 2010)

Makes you wonder how you properly sort it without some underlying program directing the way.


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## Magaly (Mar 8, 2010)

kiirby said:


> DNA is ingeneius.


hahaha...you and your puns


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## lonelyjew (Jan 20, 2010)

farfegnugen said:


> Makes you wonder how you properly sort it without some underlying program directing the way.


Well our body's, down to the individual cell, are miracles(not necessarily in the religious sense of the word). The complexity is pretty hard to imagine. Things do go wrong though, and there are many mechanisms which either repair or simply tell the cell to kill itself should mutations occur, or cell division fails. If that fails, our immune system kills cells which are becoming cancerous. If everything fails, then you get cancer.

Also, a surprisingly high number of ova are non functional because of mutations and improper division/crossing over during meiosis. Some make it as far as being released in ovulation, and after fusing with a sperm, and becoming a zygot, spontaneously abort(miscarriage) for similar reasons. Not all of these things result in a miscarriage, so sometimes you end with children with mutations, or pieces of chromosomes missing, or duplicate chromosomes. Some of these can be benign, others can cause serious developmental problems. The system isn't perfect, but it is insanely good.


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## turtle19 (Dec 2, 2010)

yea.. there are actually "programs" in us or any living things that is making the proteins and DNA.


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## Laith (Mar 20, 2009)

Amazing. Most of it is just "junk DNA" (repeats) tho


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## Perfectionist (Mar 19, 2004)

I love how nerdy you are.


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## room101 (Nov 5, 2010)

:con I'm going to start uncoiling my DNA just to be sure...


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## Starch (Dec 15, 2010)

room101 said:


> :con I'm going to start uncoiling my DNA just to be sure...


xD Let's compare who has the longest DNA.


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## Music Man (Aug 22, 2009)

lonelyjew said:


> Each cell contains about 3billion base pairs in a haploid genome, that turns out to stretch to 2.3 meters when completely relaxed and stretched out. Humans have 100 trillion cells within them. That means, if you stretch out all of the DNA inside you, end to end, you end up with 230 Billion kilometers of DNA. The average distance from Pluto the the Sun is 5.9 billion kilometers. It takes almost 9 days to travel this distance at the speed of light.
> 
> Appreciate how awesome cells are at compacting DNA from the helix, into supercoiled DNA, into nucleosomes, into rosettes, into coils, into chromatids, and into chromosomes.


Funnily enough, our genetics lecturer said that this week!


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## TheCanadian1 (Sep 14, 2009)

That's amazing.


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## phobiaphobe (Mar 16, 2010)

Laith said:


> Amazing. Most of it is just "junk DNA" (repeats) tho


"Junk DNA" is a misnomer, from what I understand. There are regulatory sequences that are continually being discovered, binding sites for proteins to regulate the expression of genes (enhancers for example). These sequences don't code for anything, but they allow for more complex regulation of gene expression.

Yeast have no introns, or "junk DNA" and they are not complex. The more complex organisms like mammals have junk DNA and maybe our complexity is due to the "junk."

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/19/139757702/dont-throw-it-out-junk-dna-essential-in-evolution


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