What Is The Human Genome And How Big Is It?

MessageToEagle.com –  What is the human genome and how big is it?

Our DNA (the famous double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid) contains all of our genes.

DNA, itself is made up of four chemical bases, pairs of which form the “rungs” of the twisted,
ladder-shaped DNA molecules.

Human Genome
These four molecules are adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G).
All genes are made up of stretches of these four bases (arranged in different ways and in different lengths).
A critical feature of DNA is the ability of the nucleotides to make specific pair, which are:

Adenine pairs with Thymine – A is complementary to T
Cytosine pairs with Guanine – C is complementary to G.

The DNA structure is due largely to hydrogen bonding between the base pairs, which link one
complementary strand to the other.

The human genome contains approximately 3 billion of these base pairs, which reside in the
23 pairs of chromosomes within the nucleus of all our cells. Each chromosome contains hundreds
to thousands of genes, which carry the instructions for making proteins.
Each of the estimated 30,000 genes in the human genome makes an average of three proteins.

22 of these are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining.

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source: NHGRI

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