If you uncoiled the DNA in a human cell how long would it be?

Answer 1

Depending on what you want to know, I have two answers...

1. If you unwound and tied together the strands of DNA in one of your cells, it would stretch up to six feet, but they would only be 50 trillionths of an inch.

2. If you could unwrap the DNA you have in all the cells in your body, you would be able to reach the moon and back 6,000 times.

Answer 2

The exact length has been debated, but the best answer is that a human cell's DNA is about 3 meters in length.

More:

If completely unraveled, human DNA would stretch from the Earth to the Moon.

If you stretch it and not unravel it, the distance is on average about 6 ft. (2 m) long, but is a very thin thread.

The single human chromosome on average consists of DNA molecules approximately 2 inches long.

The Physics Factbook [see link below] gives the formula of:

"The length is (length of 1 bp)(number of bp per cell) which is (0.34 nm)(6 ×109)"

Answer 3

Around 3 billion miles

Most sources estimate the number of cells in a human body to be from 5-10 trillion cells. In a human body with 10 trillion cells, the length of DNA would be around 37 billion miles...enough to go to the sun and back about 200 times. It would take 2 days and 7 hours to get to the other end if you were going at the speed of light.

Answer 4

If you were to uncoil the DNA in a human cell, it would extend to about 6 feet in length. This is remarkable considering the cell itself is only a few micrometers in size.