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July 10, 2009

Strange But True!

Q. “Your DNA and mine are 99.9 percent the same,” the professor reported. Was he addressing his identical twin? His sibling? The guy next door? What if he had used the figure of 50 percent?

A. Amazingly, he could have been talking to anyone, says Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project. Barely more than a century ago, few would have guessed that every cell nucleus in the human body contains the genetic master code for the entire body. It's as if every room in the Empire State Building had a book containing the architect's plans for the entire structure, says Hope College psychologist David G. Myers. Each of our 46 chromosomes is composed of a coiled chain of the molecule DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Our genes, small segments of the giant DNA molecules, number 30,000 or so. Genetically speaking, every other human is close to being your identical twin, with people the world over sharing 99.9 percent of the common human DNA sequence. “At the DNA level, we are all part of one big worldwide family.”


 
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