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January 11, 2013

Strange But True!

Q. Let's celebrate the uniquenesses that help make each of us into a one-and-only YOU. Can you name a few?

A. Most basic is the human genome containing some 3.2 billion letters of the DNA code, with about 16 million of them accounting for all of our individual differences, says Caroline Williams of New Scientist magazine. Since the code has four letters, the number of possible combinations is four raised to the power of 16 million, “more than enough to go around everybody who has ever lived, many times over. So the chances of anyone having exactly the same genome as you is zero, true even for identical twins.”


 
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