Life Sciences

Shown in the circular inset at the bottom of Figure 2 is the double helix representing DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Duplicate copies of this long tape of coded information are coiled up in each of the 100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion) cells in your body. You have 46 segments of DNA in almost all of your cells. You received 23 segments from your mother and 23 from your father. DNA contains the unique information that determines what you look like, much of your personality, and how every cell in your body is to function throughout your life.

If the DNA (46 segments) in one of your cells were uncoiled, connected, and stretched out, it would be about 7 feet long. It would be so thin its details could not be seen, even under an electron microscope. If all this very densely coded information from one cell of one person were written in books, it would fill a library of about 4,000 books. If all the DNA in your body were placed end-to-end, it would stretch from here to the Moon more than 500,000 times! In book form, that information would fill the Grand Canyon almost 100 times. If one set of DNA (one cell’s worth) from every person who ever lived were placed in a pile, the final pile would weigh less than an aspirin! Understanding DNA is just one small reason for believing you are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Ps 139:14) [See “Genetic Information” on page 72 for the above calculations.]