If you were to take all of the DNA chains from all of the chromosomes in your bo
ID: 191245 • Letter: I
Question
If you were to take all of the DNA chains from all of the chromosomes in your body and stitch them all together into one gigantic linear double helix, how long would that helix be? Use the fact that a 1 kilobase pair (kbp) double helix of DNA is 340 nanometers in length (340 nm) and that the haploid human genome contains 3.3 x 109 bp of DNA to make your calculation (and remember that human cells are diploid!). Assume that the human body contains 1013 cells and use the conversion factor 1 Meter = 6.2 x 10-4 Miles. Show your work (with all appropriate unit conversions) and express your answer in solar units (1 solar unit = distance from earth to the sun = 9.1 x 107 miles).
Explanation / Answer
The haploid genome of human have 3.3 x 109 bp base pairs of DNA approximately wrapped into 23 chromosomes. Of course, many cells of our body except germ cells are diploid, with 46 number of chromosomes. That makes a to 6 billion total base pairs of DNA in one cell. we know, each base pair is 0.34 nanometers long, therefore each diploid cell consist of about 2 meters of DNA [(0.34 × 10-9) × (6.6 × 109)]. It is assumed if human body contains 1013 cells—that works out to 2273.172 m of DNA. Now, consider that 1m = 6.2 x 10-4 miles than length of DNA is 1.4 miles. now, we know that1 solar unit = distance from earth to the sun = 9.1 x 107 miles, therefore 6.2 miles gives 0.154 * 10-7 solar unit.