Question

If however, they were not compacted and you laid them out end to end, all of the chromosomes in all of your cells would travel a great distance. Given your knowledge of the distance between base pairs (0.34nm) in the Watson and Crick model of the DNA double helix as well as the size (in base pairs) of the human genome and the number of cells in the human body, how many round trips from the Earth to the Sun would this length of DNA travel? Show your work. Note: You may assume that there are 5 x 1013 cells in the human body and that each cell has two full copies of the genome. (2x 3 billion bp)

Answer 1

Human DNA takes 681.818181818 round trips from Earth to Sun

Step-by-step explanation:

3 Billion bp (3000000000) X 2 (full copies of genome)

we get 6000000000 base pairs

6000000000 base pairs X 0.34nm (distance between base pairs)

we get 2040000000nm

2040000000nm X 5 x 10¹³ cells

2040000000 nm X 50000000000000

1.02e+23 nm (e = 100000000000000000000)

on converting 1.02e+23 nm to km we get

102000000000.00001526 km

Distance between earth and sun is 149600000 km

Divide 102000000000.00001526 km by 149600000 km

681.818181818 round trips

So answer is that human DNA takes 681.818181818 round trips from Earth to Sun