The human genome consists of about 3 billion “letters” strung together. It’s incredible—every single cell contains the entire genome. If you were to pull out the DNA from all the cells in a human body as a single strand, it would be 150 billion kilometers long. That strand could stretch from Earth to the Sun about 1,000 times. The “text” of our genome contains a great deal of important information. It’s like a huge library of cookbooks for the cell, which then uses this information to produce proteins, for example. However, changes in this “text” sometimes cause cells to become cancer cells. To better understand these processes, scientists analyze the significance of these changes.
See and try for yourself how DNA can be extracted from cells, processed, and analyzed.
For more information, visit the website of the Institute of Biochemistry I and theExperimental Nephrology Research Group.
