(Image above from google)
1. Humans share about 90% of genetic material with mice and 98% with chimpanzees.
2. The structure of the DNA molecule was discovered by the scientists Francis Crick and James Watson.
3. Two humans typically share around 99.9% of the same genetic material. It's the 0.1% of the material that makes them different.
4. Some diseases are inherited through genes.
5. Doctors may be able to cure diseases in the future by replacing bad DNA with good DNA using a process called gene therapy.
6. DNA is a really long molecule and there are lots of DNA molecules in the human body. If you unraveled all the DNA molecules in your body, they would reach to the Sun and back several times.
7. Some inherited traits are determined by multiple different genes.
8. DNA molecules have a specific shape called a double helix.
9. When identical twins procreate with another set of identical twins, their offspring are both genetic siblings and social cousins.
10. Cheetahs were almost wiped out by the last ice-age, and all modern cheetahs are descended from a small portion of the surviving cats that interbred to maintain their species. Because of this, cheetahs are practically genetic clones of one another.
11. The great majority of cancers, some 90-95% of cases, are due to environmental factors. The remaining 5-10% are due to inherited genetics.
12. About 40% to 50% of the genetic information found in our GI tract does not match anything that has ever been classified before, not plant, animal, fungus, virus, or bacteria. We have no clue what it is. Biologists call it "biological dark matter."
13. Some women can have a genetic mutation that makes them tetrachromatic, which causes their eyes to have four different types of cone cells, enabling them to see 100 million different colors compared to the roughly one million colors most of us can see.
14. Inbreeding and the rare genetic condition called methemoglobinemia resulted in blue-skinned family in Kentucky named the Fugates.
15. There is a genetic disease called the Laron syndrome that results in short stature, longer life expectancy, and near immunity to cancer and diabetes.
16. Blue-eyed people probably have a single, common ancestor, who had a genetic mutation between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago.
17. About one in every 4 million lobsters is born with a rare genetic defect that turns it blue. Sadly, these prized critters rarely survive to adulthood. After all, a bright blue crustacean crawling around the ocean floor is simply easier for predators to spot.
18. Theoretically, the human body may be incapable of living beyond 120 years due to genetic coding which may limit the amount of times our cells can divide. The longest documented human lifespan is that of Jeanne Calment of France (1875â1997), who died at age 122 years, 164 days.
19. All humans carry genetic material passed down by a female line extending back at least 200,000 years to a woman dubbed "Mitochondrial Eve."
20. Bananas are genetic hybrids. Humans intervened long ago and crossed two varieties of African wild bananas, the Musa acuminata and the Musa baalbisiana, got rid of the many seeds that were an unpleasant presence, and improved the flavor and texture from hard and unappetizing to its present soft and irresistibly sweet flavor.
21. One single group of 55 chimpanzees in West Africa has twice the genetic variability of all humans combined.
22. Some people may hate the taste of cabbage, broccoli, and other plants in the Brassica genus due to the vegetables containing chemical similarities to phenylthiocarbamide (PTC), a chemical that is either tasteless or very bitter depending on a person's genetic makeup.
23. There is a genetic mutation that causes your bones to become very dense. One person that suffered from this had a bone density that was eight times higher than the average male; he used to sink like a stone when he tried to swim and once came out of a car accident without a single fracture.
24. It would take a person typing 60 words per minute, eight hours a day, around 50 years to type the human genome.
25. Our entire DNA sequence would fill 200 1,000-page New York City telephone directories.
26. We eat DNA every day.
27. If the human genome was a book, it would be equivalent to 800 dictionaries.
28. Humans have approximately 30,000 genes.
29. Human beings share 7% of genes with E. coli bacterium, 21% with worms.
30. There are over 200 different types of cells in the human body.
31. Siblings share 50% of genes while identical twins share 100%.
Thats it for today
I really hope you liked this chapter and please comment on what you would like me to do facts about next.
See you in the next chapter
Baiiiiiii