If Only You Were a Flowering Plant

Somewhere back in my days, I read that certain flowering plants require more strings of genetic code for accurate reproduction than humans do.  This idea struck me as very plausible just the other day as I watched an American Idol audition program on television.  In some manners we are not any more complex than a potted plant.   Genetically, we are something near 57% the same as a head of cabbage.  Interesting, yes.  But the question remains: would your neighbor render into a decent form of sauerkraut as well as a head of cabbage does?

Probably not.

Deciding to seek some actual facts about the human genome, I surfed around the Internet until finding something dumbed-down enough for me to (almost) grasp.  I finally chanced upon The Human Genome: Poems on the Book of Life, by Gillian K. Ferguson.  For all I know, Mr. Ferguson might be a deranged and out-of-work machinist making everything up just to confound dumb people like me.  Still, I enjoyed what he had to say. Below are a few things I learned from him:

First and foremost, the instructions (genetic codes) that dictate the production of all forms of life are composed of only four letters: A, C, G, and T.   For those of you who—like me—cannot spell, this is problematic because the code required to make a human is three billion of these letters long.   That is a lot of room for me to misspell!   Who knows what might happen if I started misspelling this code and placed an A where C is meant to go?  What might I create in someone?  A third ear in the palm of every left hand?  Men that desire to make-out with egg plants?

The four letters actually represent Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine.  These little “nine-sine-mine” structures are something known as nitrogenous bases.  Stacked together into groups of three (codons) in various order and then linked together, these codons form a kind of string or strand of DNA, more commonly known as a gene.  Genes are essentially the hard drives upon which the blueprints for building you, a starfish, a gnat, or even a fiddle-leaf fig are stored.  In fact, each and every cell of an organism, from the simplest single cell amoeba to a multi-zillion-celled elephant, carries within it the entire blueprint for the whole creature.

Consider only that: four simple building blocks are used to build every single living thing that you see around you.  And every single tiny cell of every single creature carries the information required to build the entire beast once again!  More importantly, it took many millions of dollars and a whole group of International scientists (the Human Genome Project) a full ten years to sequence the Human Genome found in each of those cells.

Facts on the human Genome:

·         Only 0.1% the human genetic code varies from person to person.

·         The human body is comprised of 100 trillion cells—each carrying a full copy of the entire Genome.

·         It would take a typist (whatever that is) working eight hours a day a century to type out the entire letter code of the Genome.

·         Once written out, the Human Genome would stretch 5,592 miles (9,000km).

·         Mouse and man share 99% genetic similarity.

We may not be as genetically complex as a flowing plant, but we are still pretty darned colorful.  And if genetics do not convince you—watch an American Idol audition for yourself.

--Mitchell Hegman