simple explanations of complex things

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

What is a genome?

Imagine: Your body is made of lego blocks.

You were put together according to a lego instruction book. The instruction book is very long and complicated. It has 46 chapters. Each chapter has many paragraphs.

You have a friend who is also made of lego blocks. He was put together according to an instruction book that is nearly the same as yours, but not quite. It has 46 chapters like yours, but a few of the paragraphs are different to yours.

Now imagine there are 8 billion people made of lego blocks, and nearly all of them have the same instruction book, with slight variations.

This shared instruction book is the human genome. Other living species, such as animals, plants and bacteria have genomes too, but these are different to the human genome. For example, they usually have a different number of chapters and a different overall layout.

So now you know what a genome is, here are some pretty amazing facts:

The average person is made of approximately 10 trillion "lego blocks".

Each lego block contains a tiny copy of the instruction book. In fact, that's the only place you will actually find the instruction book.

Each lego block can read its own instruction book and use part of it to make more lego blocks!

Sound too far out to be true? Well, replace "lego block" with "cell", and I can assure you, this is how you and the rest of the animal and plant kingdom are made.

Truly astounding.

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