Mutations are what make us individual, and they are also the means by which individual ancestry can be determined. These occur roughly once every thousand nucleotides. Random variations in these inherited sequences are called mutations. Each gene is an instruction that tells us something about how the body is built. In contrast, genes are fragments of these chains, generally around a thousand nucleotides long. Each chain is about three billion chemical blocks in length. DNA consists of twin chains of molecules called nucleotides made from the chemicals adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). The effort required to gather the scattered shrapnel and work out an exact picture of where each bit came from is a not dissimilar task to DNA analysis.īut what exactly is DNA? Well, DNA molecules make up the human genome, the genetic code that each of us inherits from our parents. But it can be tricky to get your head around.Ī good metaphor would be a grenade that’s exploded in a room. It means scientists can get to the root of understanding who we are and from where our species comes. DNA analysis is a wonder of modern science.
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