Friday, January 29, 2010

Cells, chromosomes, etc.

 Did you know that the body is made up of smaller living things called cells? A cell is like a small factory that manufactures more cells just like itself. It continues to manufacture cells until the body is at full growth. A full grown human body is composed of about 100 trillion cells.

Do you know how much information a SINGLE cell contains? If all the information contained in the genes of a single cell were written in books, that information would fill a thousand books of six hundred pages each.

(Cells)

Did you know that each cell has a nucleus and in the nucleus are chromosomes that contain your genes? Now, consider this. If all the chromosomes of an average body were removed, they could be placed in a cube of only one cubic inch in volume. However, if the chromosomes in the cube were uncoiled and laid end to end, they would reach from Earth to the sun eight hundred times, a distance of seventy-five billion miles (121,000,000,000 km).
 
Here is a chromosome.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! This is good stuff, David. Thank you for sharing and showing us what you learned this week.

    See you at camp and don't forget to prepare for show and tell.

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  2. WOW, that is AWESOME!
    Thanks David!
    We will add your great blog to our Favorite Young Bloggers section of our blogroll!
    Thanks for the great Biology lesson here:)

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