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Key topics:
Organization of information in chromosomes
DNA supercoiling
Structure of the chromosome
Understanding of Genes Has Evolved
Double-stranded circles
Human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
16,569 bp
~210 mtDNAs per mitochondrion
Plant mtDNA
200,0002,500,000 bp
Chloroplast DNA
120,000160,000 bp
Mitochondrion
DNA, Chromosomes, Genes, and
Complexity
Neither the total length of DNA, nor the number of
chromosomes correlates strongly with the complexity of an
organism
Dogs and coyotes have 78 chromosomes
Amphibians have much more DNA than humans
Plants have more genes than humans
The correlation between genome size and complexity is poor
because most of eukaryotic DNA is non-coding