{"id":899,"date":"2020-04-19T02:15:10","date_gmt":"2020-04-19T06:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/?p=899"},"modified":"2021-05-25T17:05:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T21:05:58","slug":"65-super-interesting-facts-about-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/65-super-interesting-facts-about-dna\/","title":{"rendered":"65 Super Interesting Facts About DNA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here are 65 super interesting facts about DNA. I hope the experience is as interesting for you as it was for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. DNA, your hereditary material, is short for deoxyribonucleic acid.<\/li>
  2. Your DNA is a molecule made up of two chains coiling around one another to form the famous double helix structure thus the double stranded DNA test<\/li>
  3. British biologist Francis Crick and American biologist James Watson discovered the two-strand model together.<\/li>
  4. The strands they discovered are polynucleotides.<\/li>
  5. A lot of nucleotides make up a polynucleotide.<\/li>
  6. Nucleases make up nucleotides.<\/li>
  7. We have four nucleases – Cytosine (C), which has the chemical formula C4H5N3O; guanine (G), which has the chemical formula C5H5N5O; adenine (A), which has the chemical formula C5H5N5; and thymine (T), which has the chemical formula C5H6N2O2.<\/li>
  8. Each nuclease is in two groups. These groups are called pyrimidines and purines.<\/li>
  9. The T and C are pyrimidines, while the A and G are purines.<\/li>
  10. All of your DNA is made up of these four letters only (C, G, A, and T).<\/li>
  11. Covalent bonds tie these nucleotides together in a chain called the phosphodiester linkage.<\/li>
  12. DNA carries genetic instructions.<\/li>
  13. These genetic instructions determine your development, functioning, growth, and reproduction.<\/li>
  14. DNA carries the genetic instructions for every organism, you know.<\/li>
  15. There is another kind of nucleic acid apart from DNA. It is known as RNA.<\/li>
  16. RNA, which is also essential for gene expression, stands for ribonucleic acid.<\/li>
  17. DNA and RNA<\/a> are the two main types of nucleic acids in you.<\/li>
  18. What is a nucleic acid? It is one of the four major macromolecules essential for life. The other three are carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids.<\/li>
  19. The strands of your DNA, store identical biological sequence information.<\/li>
  20. When these two strands go in opposite directions and separate, the information duplicates also. <\/li>
  21. Within eukaryotic cells (animals, plants, fungi, and protists), DNA is organized in chromosomes<\/a>. <\/li>
  22. DNA was first discovered by the Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher while he was researching the key components of white blood cells using salt solutions on pus-coated patient bandages that were sent to him by a local surgical clinic. <\/li>
  23. After Friedrich Miescher isolated DNA, the German biochemist Albrecht Kossel discovered the basic building blocks of nuclein.<\/li>
  24. Friedrich Miescher gave DNA its present name, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).<\/li>
  25. Friedrich Miescher won him a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the basic blocks of nuclein.<\/li>
  26. Mitosis is the process by which our cells segregate duplicated DNA.<\/li>
  27. German anatomist Walther Flemming and German biologist Theodor Boveri discovered the process of mitosis (cell division). <\/li>
  28. Hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions stabilize the DNA double helix.<\/li>
  29. Adenine has the chemical structure to create the only hydrogen with thymine, forming an A-T base pair. Similarly, guanine can only ever form a bond with cytosine, forming a G-C base pair.<\/li>
  30. Modified (non-canonical) bases occur in DNA. <\/li>
  31. Sense (containing the same sequence as the mRNA) and anti-sense DNA sequences exist. <\/li>
  32. Did you know that DNA is like a twisted rope? A process called DNA supercoiling, which affects transcription, DNA replication, and chromosomal segregation.<\/li>
  33. DNA telomeres<\/strong>, which exist at the end of a DNA, can fray and splinter over time.<\/li>
  34. If that frayed DNA branches further, a third strand can occur.<\/li>
  35. A gene, of which you have roughly 20, 000, is a sequence of DNA which your parents transferred to you, containing your genetic information.<\/li>
  36. If your entire DNA was unwound and put end-to-end, it could be stretched to the sun and pulled back over six hundred times.<\/li>
  37. No one has done it yet.<\/li>
  38. Only 0.1% of your DNA is unique; you share the rest (99.9% of your DNA) with me and every other human being. <\/li>
  39. This 0.1% determines your appearance.<\/li>
  40. Only 3% of your DNA is genes; the rest of the DNA controls the activity of these genes.<\/li>
  41. The entire human genome has 20, 000 genes and contains 3 billion base pairs of DNA.<\/li>
  42. The DNA from your saliva can reveal which world regions your ancestors may have lived hundreds to thousands of years ago (this isn’t completely accurate).<\/li>
  43. More importantly, if you don’t know your biological father is, your DNA can reveal it (this is much more accurate than the DNA test mentioned above.)<\/li>
  44. You, and all other human beings, share 60% of genes with fruit flies<\/li>
  45.  2\/3rd of those genes are known to be involved in cancer.<\/li>
  46. We also share 98.7% of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos (pygmy chimpanzee.)<\/li>
  47. You share 85% of your DNA with a mouse.<\/li>
  48. You share 41% of your DNA with a banana.<\/li>
  49. A powerful new technology called CRISPR, discovered by Yoshizumi Ishino, could allow scientists to edit genomes easily.<\/li>
  50. CRISPR may lead us to the cure of many genetic diseases. The cure for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other genetic diseases may be just around the corner.<\/li>
  51. To sequence, a DNA strand means to determine the order of nucleotides in your DNA.<\/li>
  52. DNA testing now lets you sequence your full genome, all 6 billion letters, in a few days. <\/li>
  53. It wasn’t always this way. It took scientists 13 years to fully sequence the human genome the first time around. The marvel of modern technology, huh?<\/li>
  54. Other than revealing close and distant relationships, DNA can also reveal your propensity for certain conditions. <\/li>
  55.  DNA testing is used for accurate disease diagnosis.<\/li>
  56. Accurate diagnosis through DNA testing can prevent or at least delay a disease<\/a>.<\/li>
  57. Your DNA can move, even though it is not a living entity because as much as 50% of your genome is makes up sequences called jumping genes that can move.<\/li>
  58. Only 3% of DNA can encode proteins; the rest is non-functional. <\/li>
  59. DNA can not only store genetic material, but it can also store digital information: <\/li>
  60. A fish named “Bdelloid rotifers” can eat and survive on foreign DNA.<\/li>
  61. DNA is such a stable molecule that it can remain stable for 2000 years with only a little deterioration. <\/li>
  62. It would take you 29 years to type out your whole genome.<\/li>
  63. Scientists conducting genomics research need DNA sequencing data to advance genomics research.<\/li>
  64. The need for this data raises privacy concerns. You have a right to keep your medical information private because your genetic information can<\/em> be misused.<\/li>
  65. Rising interest in DNA testing is also leading to fears of genetic discrimination in the future.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    I hope these 65 super interesting facts have helped to increase your knowledge of DNA and the testing we can do today. We have advanced so far in our scientific world today. We can now do DNA testing for weight loss<\/strong>, age prevention<\/strong>, athletic performance<\/strong>, and micronutrient absorption<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So what do you think? Wasn’t that super interesting? Which number was the most interesting for you? I love hearing from you. Please leave your comments and questions in the comment section below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here are 65 super interesting facts about DNA. I hope the experience is as interesting for you as it was … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37,50],"tags":[117,102,100,65,118],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410065,"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/410065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dnaistheway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}