10 Facts about the DNA

10 Facts about the DNA:
1. Actually it was Rosalind Franklin’s discovery of the chemical structure of DNA that led to Crick and Watson’s double helix model.
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) was first isolated by the Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher in 1869.
2. Even though it codes for all the information that makes up an organism, DNA is built using only four building blocks known as nitrogenous bases, the nucleotides adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine.
3. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.
4. Every human being shares at least 99.9% of their DNA with every other human. This 0.1% difference between us may have to do with the number of nucleotides in a person's DNA.
5. You have 98% of your DNA in common with a chimpanzee, 40-50% with cabbage, 50% with banana, 70% with a slug.
6. If you could type 60 words per minute, eight hours a day, it would take approximately 50 years to type the human genome. (An animal’s entire code, comprising a long string of the letters A,G,C,T, is called a genome.)
7. The completion of the project to map the entire human genome was announced on the 50th anniversary of Crick and Watson’s original paper.
8. DNA is a fragile molecule. About a thousand times a day, something happens to it to cause errors. This could include errors during transcription, damage from ultraviolet light, or any of a host of other activities. There are many repair mechanisms, but some damage isn't repaired. This means you carry mutations! Some of the mutations cause no harm, a few are helpful, while others can cause diseases, such as cancer.
9. Scientists at Cambridge University believe humans have DNA in common with the mud worm and that it is the closest invertebrate genetic relative to us. In other words, you have more in common, genetically speaking, with a mud worm than you do with a spider or octopus or cockroach.
10. DNA is the World’s Best Digital Storage Media! In 2012, Harvard Researchers were able to store 700 terabytes of data on a single gram of DNA. 700 terabytes is the equivalent of some 330lbs worth of hard drives, all in a liquid medium that could easily fit on a fingertip.