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The DNA in a human cell has a mass of approximately 6.0 × 10⁻¹² grams. Calculate how many human cells you would need to use to extract one mg of DNA?

User Julime
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Final answer:

To extract one mg of DNA, you would need approximately 1.67 × 10⁸ human cells.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the number of human cells needed to extract one mg of DNA, we need to convert the mass of DNA per cell into milligrams and then divide one mg by that value.

Given that the DNA in a human cell has a mass of approximately 6.0 × 10⁻¹² grams, we can convert this to milligrams by multiplying it by 10⁶. This gives us 6.0 × 10⁻⁶ mg of DNA per cell.

To calculate the number of cells needed to extract one mg of DNA, we divide 1 mg by the mass of DNA per cell: 1 mg / (6.0 × 10⁻⁶ mg) = 1.67 × 10⁸ cells.

User Richard Purdie
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