DNA Facts

We share 70% of our DNA with a slug.

If your DNA was stretched out it would reach to the moon 6,000 times.

If you could uncoil all the DNA in your body and stretch it end-to-end, it would reach approximately 10 billion miles—enough to make a round trip from Earth to Pluto.

All Humans Are 99.9% Genetically Identical and 98.4% of human genes are the same as the genes of a chimpanzee.

Mushrooms are more closely related to humans than they are to plants.

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg collected DNA from chewing gum and cigarette butts found on New York streets, then used genetic analysis to create 3D-printed portrait sculptures showing possible faces of the strangers who left them behind.

Bearing a male child can alter a woman's brain by leaving male DNA behind. This phenomenon, called fetal microchimerism, allows fetal cells to cross the placenta and persist in the mother's body for decades—including in her brain. Research has found male DNA in the brains of women who died in their 90s.

In 2009, thieves arrived by helicopter on a cash depot roof in Stockholm. They had placed a fake bomb at the police helicopter hangar. Scattered caltrops on every access road. Stole $5.3 million and escaped clean. Police caught them months later through DNA on a piece of duct tape someone had licked.

In 2019, scientists extracted a complete human genome from a 5,700-year-old wad of chewed birch pitch found at Syltholm, Denmark. It belonged to a young woman with dark skin, dark hair, and blue eyes. They even recovered DNA from her last meal: duck and hazelnuts.