Chromosome 20

xantox, 25 March 2007 in Gallery

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The genetic information of all living organisms is encoded into long sequences of four molecular symbols, structured like the steps of giant DNA ladders named chromosomes. Human cells contain two sets of 23 chromosomes, each having 50 to 250 millions symbols or base pairs for a total of 3 billions, like a book of one million pages written in a mostly unknown language. In this image, a short excerpt from human chromosome 20, which has 63 644 868 base pairs, is represented by using the letters A C G T and dots for apparently unused sections.

Excerpt from human chromosome 20 © Ben Fry, Computation Group MIT Media Lab

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  1. © Ben Fry, Computation Group MIT Media Lab []

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