Know Your DNA: Ten amazing facts

Some of our readers who take excessive pleasure in studying those slimy squishy things under a lens (bio-specialists) must already be aware of what a DNA is and how amazing it is! But for many others like me, a DNA is like a computer chip, which contains codes about how a program is to be developed. Or, we can say that a DNA is like a map, which contains the information necessary to build a house. A DNA, analogically, contains 'codes' which is used to make a human being! So if you ever wondered how come a single cell in mommy's tummy evolves into a full fledged baby, DNA is your partial answer. It is the DNA which has all the information about how the cells should split, which things should join together, so on and so forth. Note that a DNA is very very small. Only 2.5 nano meters! Following ten facts will tell you how weird this little molecule is.  

1. 99% of the DNA sequence of entire human population is same!

2. If you put all the DNA molecules in your body end to end, the DNA would reach from the Earth to the Sun and back over 600 times. Trust me even I don't believe it but I have cross checked this information from multiple sources. 

3.  Sigh!...98% of our DNA resembles with that of Chimpanzee. 

4.  How about storing your super-secret files in a DNA? A little too far fetched at this moment, but scientists are working on this. So, why in DNA? why not a CD or a drive? Because sooner or later, they will get  damaged. DNA, on the other hand, is almost indestructible. It can keep the information stored in it undisturbed for millions of years! 

5. You share 99.5% of your DNA with your parents. Were it not for this difference of 0.5%, we'd all look exactly like our mom and dad.

6.  Okay here's the big one. Each tiny molecule of DNA contains about 1.5 GB of information. So...given that a human body has about 100 trillion cells, the total amount of information stored in a human body is 150 trillion GB!! No offence to our engineers but I don't think any computer on Earth has that much capacity. 

7.  On October 12, 2008, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft flew a mission to the International Space Station orbiting around earth. On board, it carried a small memory device with the digitized DNA sequences of various (questionably) important people, including comedian Stephen Colbert, physicist Stephen Hawking, Jo Garcia, and shamed pro cyclist Lance Armstrong. The purpose of the drive is to provide the building blocks to resurrect humanity should an apocalyptic event destroy the planet. Oh the humanities...

8.  It would take a person typing 60 words per minute, eight hours a day, around 50 years to type the human genome.
   
9. The draft of map of the human DNA code was completed for the first time only recently in 2003.

10. Our genetic code is so long that it can fill 200  telephone directory sized books with 1000 pages each. And yet, scientists have not been able to tell the function of about 85% of the DNA sequence. They discard it as "junk".