1. Friedrich Miescher discovered DNA in 1869, although scientists did not understand DNA was the genetic material in cells until 1943. Prior to that time, it was widely believed that proteins stored genetic information.
2.DNA stores all information that makes up an organism. That’s quite a lot of information but what’s interesting about DNA is that it is made of just four building blocks, which are – cytosine (C), thymine (T), guanine (G) and adenine (A).
3.There were some ancient viruses that used to infect humans but today, 8% of human DNA is actually made of those ancient viruses!
4.
Human DNA is 95% identical to the DNA of chimpanzees. That’s quite understandable but what’s shocking is that
5.
human DNA is 50% identical to the DNA of bananas! You read it correctly! We said BANANAS!
6.
Here is another shocker – cabbages and humans share about 40-50% of identical DNA. Yeah cabbages those that we eat! You know… those green leafy cabbages!
7.
You know what? 1 single gram of DNA is capable of holding an amazing 700 terabytes of data!
8.
If we want to store all digital information in this world, all we need is 2 grams of DNA.
9.
Human penis once used to be spiny. That’s scary! Luckily that DNA code which made the penis spiny is lost. Around 700,000 years ago Neanderthals and modern humans got separate from a common ancestor and that is when the modern humans actually lost that DNA code. Good for us! Imagine how a woman would feel while performing fellatio of even penetrative sex!
10.
Scientists have found out that a total of 510 DNA codes have been lost throughout the process of human evolution.
11.
DNA is present in each and every cell of the human body. Each DNA strand is 1.8 meters long but squeezed into a space of 0.09 micrometers!
12.
The center of our galaxy Milky Way contains molecular precursors of DNA.
13.
The DNA in every cell of the human body is damaged 1,000 to 1 million times every single day. Luckily our body has an elaborate system of repairing those damaged DNAs constantly. When the repairing mechanism fails events like cellular death or cancer formation takes place.
14.
99.9% of DNA is identical in all humans on this Earth. The remaining 0.1% is what helps us to differentiate between DNA sequences allowing us to tell which DNA belongs to whom.
15.
DNA damaged can be caused by Sun’s UV light. Damage may also be caused due to a transcription error. There are various other factors that can cause DNA damage. Our body is equipped with a mechanism that can reverse these damages but not all damages can be repaired always. Unrepaired damages are nothing but mutation. This means that we almost always carry mutations, most of which are bad but some may be good.
16.
According to researches, DNA has a half-life of 521 years. This simply means that the oldest animal or organism that can be cloned back to life cannot be older than 2 million years. Thus, replicating dinosaurs is literally impossible because they went extinct 65 million years ago.
17.
If someone undergoes bone marrow transplant, the recipient may or may not have DNA of the donor. In most cases, the recipient will not have foreign DNA.
18.
Orbiting our Earth is a memory device that is known as ‘Immortal Drive’. The device is actually inside the International Space Station and it contains digitalized DNA sequence of Lance Armstrong, Stephen Colbert, Stephen Hawking, and others. It is actually an attempt to preserve the human race in the event of a global catastrophe.
19.
Earth did not have phosphates. Meteors were responsible for bringing reduced phosphorus earth which then oxidized for form phosphates and thereby creating the mechanism that generates RNA and DNA.
20.
DNA is capable of replicating or duplicating itself, it is, it is capable of making an identical copy of itself and this is essential during cell division.
21.
In point 14 we mentioned genome. A genome is nothing but the entire DNA sequence of an organism. One genome is estimated to have 3,000,000,000 DNA bases. Now a ‘base’ is nothing but a unit of DNA. To simplify even further, a base is a building block of DNA and there are 4 such building blocks as mentioned in the first point. These bases, in turn, pair up together to form genetic codes.
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