Final answer:
The chromosome number in an organism does not indicate whether it's a plant or an animal, as both can have various levels of ploidy. Chromosome number affects DNA content but is influenced by other factors as well.
Step-by-step explanation:
The chromosome number of an organism does not indicate whether it is a plant or an animal. Both plants and animals can be diploid, having two sets of chromosomes, or have varying levels of ploidy. For example, the common strawberry is octoploid (8n), while the cultivated kiwi is hexaploid (6n). This means that strawberry has eight sets of chromosomes and kiwi has six, which does not correlate to being a plant or an animal. Instead, chromosome number can give insight into the complexity of genetic information and the organism's evolutionary adaptations.
The cultivated strawberry's octoploid nature may have arisen from hybridization and subsequent chromosomal duplications, offering it advantages like increased genetic variation and adaptation capabilities. While the amount of DNA in a cell's nucleus is proportional to the chromosome number, it is not solely determined by it. Other factors, such as the size of individual chromosomes and the amount of non-coding DNA, also affect the total DNA content. Therefore, the chromosome number does not necessarily correlate with the amount of DNA.