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Asked by sebisepic to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 17 Mar 2013.
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Jennifer Paxton answered on 17 Mar 2013:
Great question! Yes, DNA is the same shape in humans and animals. DNA is the shape known as a ‘double helix’ which looks like a twisted ladder! The interesting thing about your question is that although the shape of the DNA is the same, the sequence (Or order) of the DNA is very different.
DNA is made up of 4 different building blocks called nucleotides. The order of the nucleotides is what makes animals, humans and plants different because the order tells the cells what proteins to make and whether to make a human leg bone or a chicken wing or a plant leaf! It’s pretty cool to think that all the differences between species are made from the differences in order of just 4 types of building blocks! ( of course I should say that we have millions and millions of these blocks in a big long sequence of our DNA!)
To answer your other question, DNA is stored in the nucleus of every cell, which is kind of like the control centre if the cell.
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Phil Rice answered on 18 Mar 2013:
DNA is not only the same shape in humans and animals, it’s the same shape in EVERY SINGLE living thing, from bacteria, viruses, plants, fungi, fish, whales, you name it. There is no other chemical on the planet which does what DNA or RNA does – make copies of itself.
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Stefan Piatek answered on 19 Mar 2013:
In animals we’ve also got DNA in little factories for energy in our cells called mitochondria. We only get this DNA from our mother alone! This DNA was used to trace how our ancestors left Africa!
Also, bacteria have the same shape DNA but it forms little coils or loops sometimes, these can actually be chucked out of the bacteria when they die and another bacteria can pick them up and use their genes!
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