5 DNA Facts That Reveal Just How Wise Nature Is

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is what unites us with the entire animal and plant world. We know, for example, that human DNA and that of a banana are 50% identical (obviously, we are not half a banana), and that each person’s genome differs from that of any other human by just 0.1%, a percentage tiny which is precisely what makes us unique. Did you know that there are some animals on the Planet capable of “stealing” DNA, not only from other animals, but also from plants? And that it is totally impossible to clone dinosaurs?

O awesome.club gathered seven different facts about DNA so that you can improve your knowledge about the world we live in. At the end of this post, check out a detective story that has been going on for over 25 years and that includes DNA.

A group of specialists studied the DNA of the moa, an extinct bird, from bones with ages varying between 600 and 8 thousand years. They found that after 521 years, the DNA bonds had disintegrated so much that the genetic code was quite difficult to read.

In about 1.5 million years, the fragments of these bonds will become so short that they cannot be read, and the complete disintegration of DNA will take approximately 6.8 million years to occur. That is, there is virtually no hope that anyone can clone dinosaurs, which became extinct about 65 million years ago.

Scholars do not exclude the hypothesis that the period of partial disintegration of DNA in fossils preserved in permafrost conditions (a layer of soil that is permanently frozen in Siberia) could be longer, but it is unlikely that it would be enough for a “ Jurassic Park” is created in real life. But the possibility of creating clones of mammoths, whose remains are found in areas where it is winter practically all year round, is not completely ruled out: for example, on Wrangel Island, these giant animals lived “only” 4 thousand years ago.

The Paris plant (belonging to the Melanthiaceae family) originates from Japan and has 50 times more nucleotides (“letters” that “write” DNA) than a human being: 150 billion against 3.2 billion. If all the DNA molecules contained in a cell of this plant were stacked one on top of the other, the result would be a tower as tall as Big Ben — London’s famous clock, which is 96 meters high.

However, experts estimate that amoebic DNA may be even more voluminous, making its complexity unrelated to that of the organism in which it “inhabits”.

Furthermore, it is not known why this type of difference in the genetic code exists in nature. By the way, this peculiarity does not give any advantage to the Paris plant. On the contrary: it needs much more time to grow, since replication of its DNA (in other words, the process of copying itself) takes longer in its case than in other plants.

Every cell in the human body contains 46 DNA molecules (except eggs and sperm, where there are 23), and if all that were lined up in a row, we would have a kind of chain two meters long. In total, the human body has about 37.2 trillion cells. Therefore, if we made a chain with all the DNA molecules in our body, its length would reach 74 trillion meters, that is 74 billion kilometers.

Do you think a lot? The distance between the Sun and Pluto is about 5,700 million kilometers, so the round trip would be 11,400 million kilometers. Taking these numbers into account, a single adult’s DNA could “envelop” the area between the Sun and Pluto by more than 6 loops. Whereas, from Earth to the Sun, back and forth, DNA could do that 70 times.

The rotifers included in the subclass Bdelloidea are unusual creatures, as all their representatives are exclusively female. However, in their more than 40 million years of existence, rotifers have divided into 360 species, which is not typical of creatures that reproduce asexually.

In reality, these microscopic creatures have learned to integrate the DNA of different plants, fungi and bacteria into their genome. According to the researchers, this is possible thanks to their ability to withstand periods of drought: rotifers are able to “dry up”, practically interrupting their own lives. They resurrect when they have contact with water again.

During drought, rotifers “absorb” foreign DNA and, after their rebirth, “recover their own DNA along with the “stolen” one. And as the alien genome absorbs precisely the sex cells, the born rotifer will be genetically different from its “mother”.

Leif Eriksonwhich reached the shores of America around the year 1000

Thanks to an analysis of the DNA of inhabitants of Iceland, researchers discovered that the first person from the New World to set foot in Europe was a woman. This was several centuries before Christopher Columbus reached America. And as is known, the first European to reach the coast of North America was the Scandinavian navigator Leif Erikson, who lived between the 10th and 11th centuries. Perhaps he was responsible for taking that American woman to the then distant European lands.

At one point in the study, the researchers discovered that 11 representatives of four Icelandic families who had lived on the island at least since 1710 had a type of mitochondrial DNA, whose closest “relative” is only found in indigenous peoples of North America. And since mitochondrial DNA is inherited exclusively from the mother, we can assume that the first American person to set foot in the Old World was a woman, and that this happened around the year 1000.

Plaque placed at the site where one of the ‘Ghost of Heilbronn’ crimes took place

Between 1993 and 2009, in France, Austria and Germany, 40 offenses were registered, including some particularly serious ones. There was no connection between them, with the exception of one: in the places where the crimes were committed, DNA belonging to the same woman was found. Everything was so mysterious that the alleged criminal was nicknamed the “Ghost of Heilbronn”, after the name of the German city where the murder of a policewoman took place in 2007.

The only thing the police were able to discover was that the “ghost” was from Eastern Europe, with no further information being obtained. The case had so much repercussion that, in early 2009, a reward of 300,000 euros was offered in exchange for a clue leading to the person responsible for the crimes. In March 2009, samples were collected from the charred body of a man and, to the surprise of the investigators, not only was that DNA female, it was the same as that found in the places where the crimes were committed.

The verification of the facts concluded that there was no ghost. It was all the fault of the flexible cotton-tipped swabs used to collect the DNA samples. Such objects were still contaminated during the manufacturing phase, and it was the fault of one of the workers, who left the genetic traces that would be found during the investigations. And that’s how the controversial story about one of Europe’s most intriguing maniacs came to an end.