Numbers in Life: A Statistical Genetic Approach

In this paper, we briefly reviewed the numbers in life from a statistical genetic approach. The human genome comprises of 6 billion chemical bases of DNA. The DNA encodes 30,000 genes. It consists of two parts; the nuclear genome; which consists of 3,200,000,000 nucleotides of DNA, divided into 24 linear molecules, the shortest 50,000,000 nucleotides in length and the longest 260,000,000 nucleotides, each contained in a different chromosome and the mitochondrial genome; which contains approximately 16,600 base pairs encoding 37 genes. Most human cells have 46 chromosomes. However, the number of chromosomes in the nuclei of a person with Down syndrome is 47. The DNA of any two people on Earth is 99.6 percent identical, the 0.4 percent variation represents about 20 million base pairs. Almost all 98 percent of the human DNA is noncoding, while in bacteria, only 2% of the genetic material does not code for anything.