There's HOW Many Feet Of DNA Inside My Cells?

Ahhh yes, DNA... it's that junk inside your body that makes everyone different, right? But what is it really? Read on for some super cool facts about DNA!

1. In the words of Kendrick Lamar, "I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA."

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Kendrick obviously knows something we don't.

2. But what is DNA exactly?

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It's basically little spirals floating around, telling our body what to do!

3. DNA stands for DeoxyriboNucleic Acid.

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DNA is a nucleic acid, which is where the "nucleic acid" part comes from in its name. "Deoxyribo" describes the structure of the sugar found in DNA. Every single cell in your body (and in all other organisms, like plants) has DNA!

4. DNA is made up of molecules called nucleotides.

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There are four kinds of nucleotides in DNA which each consist of a sugar, a phosphate group, and a base. The base is what differs between the four nucleotides, and can be an Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Cytosine (C), or Guanine (G) base.

5. Nucleotides are held together by bonds.

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Bonds link the nucleotides together to form strands of DNA. The bonds between the phosphate groups of the nucleotides, called phosphodiester bonds, are what hold them together vertically. The bonds between the bases hold the two strands together horizontally and are called hydrogen bonds.

6. Nucleotides twist into a shape called a double helix.

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Ya know those curly cords that landline phones used to have? And how you'd mindlessly fiddle with it as you gabbed with your friend? The shape of DNA is just like that!

7. DNA is wound around proteins to organize it.

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DNA is wrapped around proteins called histones (yellow in the picture) and the entire complex is called a nucleosome. (Don't worry, we'll come back to what proteins are later...)

8. Nucleosomes are then organized into chromosomes!

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Each cell in your body has its DNA organized in 46 chromosomes, 23 chromosomes of information from your mom and 23 from your dad. Each number chromosome contains the same type of information but may have different specifics (for example, two chromosomes that line up may both have the gene for hair color, but the one from your mom codes blonde hair and the one from your dad codes brown hair).

9. Egg and sperm cells only have 23 chromosomes.

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Eggs and sperm have only 23 chromosomes because they must combine with the egg/sperm that they meet. Whether the information in these 23 chromosomes come from your mom or dad's DNA is quite random, which is why there's no way to perfectly predict what a baby will look like, or how it will act.

10. Each of your cells is only 30 micrometers wide (that's ~17 times smaller than a grain of salt)...which is why the 6 FEET of DNA has to be packaged so tightly to fit!

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That's right, if you were to unpackage and stretch out all the DNA in one of your cells, it'd be nearly as tall as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (sadly this has nothing to do with you being as tall as The Rock...)

11. But what does all that DNA do?!

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Okay, so now we know what DNA looks like in cells, but what's the purpose of all that genetic information? Read on here to find out!