If a polymerase takes a second to complete reading 2000 base pairs how much time will it take to read 2.2m of DNA?
Answers
Answer: The most important function of DNA is to carry genes, the information that specifies all the proteins that make up an organism—including information about when, in what types of cells, and in what quantity each protein is to be made. The genomes of eucaryotes are divided up into chromosomes, and in this section we see how genes are typically arranged on each chromosome. In addition, we describe the specialized DNA sequences that allow a chromosome to be accurately duplicated and passed on from one generation to the next.
We also confront the serious challenge of DNA packaging. Each human cell contains approximately 2 meters of DNA if stretched end-to-end; yet the nucleus of a human cell, which contains the DNA, is only about 6 μm in diameter. This is geometrically equivalent to packing 40 km (24 miles) of extremely fine thread into a tennis ball! The complex task of packaging DNA is accomplished by specialized proteins that bind to and fold the DNA, generating a series of coils and loops that provide increasingly higher levels of organization, preventing the DNA from becoming an unmanageable tangle. Amazingly, although the DNA is very tightly folded, it is compacted in a way that allows it to easily become available to the many enzymes in the cell that replicate it, repair it, and use its genes to produce proteins.