Really, how big is your genome?
Genome Conversion Worksheet
Determine the “length” of the human genome given the size of a nucleotide printed on a
paper and the number of nucleotides in the human genome.
AATCGTTACTACTAT
|----------------------------------------------- 15 cm --------------------------------------------------|
1. The length of the sequence above is 15 cm. How long is each letter (nucleotide)?
___1___ nucleotides : _______ cm
2. The human genome has 3,100,000,000 nucleotides. Calculate the length of the human
genome if it was represented by the in the size of the letters above.
3,100,000,000 nucleotides x ________ cm
nucleotides
= __________________ cm
3. Convert the number of centimeters (cm) to the number of kilometers (km).
__________________cm x
1 km
100,000 cm
= _________________ km
This will be the length of the human genome in kilometers (km) if it was represented by
the size of the letters above.
4. Calculate the number of times you can travel to the following places.
A. Home to School: 2 km
_________________ km (answer from #3) / 2 km = _______________ times
B. Home to Chicago: 467 km
_________________ km (answer from #3) / 467 km = _____________ times
C. Across the United States: 4,617 km
_________________ km (answer from #3) / 4617 km = ____________ times
D. Around the Earth: 40,074 km
_________________ km (answer from #3) / 40,074 km = __________ times
* BONUS
Calculate the number of round trips from the answers from #5.
Also, you can do these calculations for the following organisms.
- Chimpanzee 3,100,000,000 nucleotides
- Dog 2,500,000,000 nucleotides
- Shark 1,240,000,000 nucleotides
- Cow 3,000,000,000 nucleotides
- Frog 6,900,000,000 nucleotides
- Tree 550,000,000 nucleotides
- Worm 97,000,000 nucleotides
- Yeast 14,000,000 nucleotides
- E. Coli 5,386 nucleotides
- Amoeba 670,000,000,000 nucleotides
- Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) 19, 750 nucleotides