Dna

[orbsycli]

So DNA's in my spit
in my hair

but where?

How small is a strand of DNA?

[Buffy]

Well, according to this article (that has a bunch of other interesting points in it too about DNA replication), its only about a millionth of an inch, all wound up inside your cells, but if you could unwind it and stretch it out it would be over 3 feet (1m) long!

Small, but really big,
Buffy

[Racoon]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

So DNA's in my spit
in my hair

but where?

How small is a strand of DNA?

Its in a hair flake sluffed off from your every movements.

Rack Master Ace.

[somebody]

It is highly condense in your cells. I really dont know of my head what is the width of the double stranded dna, but it gets condense in to 30 nm fiber, then 30 nm selenoid gets condense into 700 nm fiber and then i think 1400 nm or chromatin.

it is very thin like many of us here already mentions, according to PBS if you unrevel all of your body dna it would stretch from here to the moon and back about 3000 times (yet my molecular bio professor said only 30 times).

[orbsycli]

I read somewhere else on this forum that humans don't even use all of their DNA...the rest is junk DNA, right?

Does anyone think it's a possibility to activate junk DNA?

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

Does anyone think it's a possibility to activate junk DNA?

Yep. Michaelangelica and I were chatting about it just the other day. I've had arguments about its structure and usage with Biochemist in the past too. I think you'll run into quite a bit here if you search on "junk dna"....

Cheers,
Buffy

[orbsycli]

interesting...

there are a lot of people I've been encountering lately that believe they can use visualization techniques, sunshine, and the Mayan Tzolkin to activate their DNA.
They believed that on "Galactic Activation Portal" days (there are 52 in a Tzolkin year. Black squares on the Tzolkin)
certain people could rapidly evolve themselves through meditation.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

there are a lot of people I've been encountering lately that believe they can use visualization techniques, sunshine, and the Mayan Tzolkin to activate their DNA.

The only question is, why do they believe they could do it? Its not necessarily impossible: we're already doing "gene therapy" which is a chemical mechanism along the same lines, but the thing is that gene therapy only changes *them* not their *offspring*. The harder part is finding the mechanism that connects "what you're visualizing" with specific--and more importantly *directed*--changes to your DNA.

You'd need a massive Improbability Drive to magnify the effect and make it happen....

Sunlight might do it, but only randomly. That's how you get skin cancer of course!

Originally Posted by orbsycli

certain people could rapidly evolve themselves through meditation.

On the other hand, claims and *demonstrations* of such techniques--usually that only the "enlightened masters" or "messengers from God" can perform--become the core for religious sects or at least highly lucrative snake oil distributorships.

Caveat emptor,
Buffy

[orbsycli]

Why would it be random?

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

Why would it be random?

You mean the sunlight? Sunburn causes severe stress, in combination with UV rays that have high energy levels that can directly affect bits of DNA. We don't know the entire mechanism, but susceptibility to cancer has to do with the ease with which thet DNA switches for the mechanisms that control reproduction of cells can be flipped causing them to reproduce without bound. But what changes or mutations occur in a DNA strand due to this sort of external attack can be anywhere on the DNA strand. A UV ray doesn't know how to target some specific location or not, it just hits it and if it hits it right with enough energy or repeatedly enough, it can cause damage. Certain areas are more *susceptible* to sustaining this damage, thus causing problems like causing the cell to become cancerous, but there are lots of different possibilities.

Randomly distributed,
Buffy