How many carbons are in dna?

Answer 1

That depends on how big your DNA is. Given that there are 10 carbons each per adenosine, guanosine, and thymidine and 9 carbons per cytidine.... which means there are 20 carbons per A-T basepair, and 19 carbons per G-C basepair... assuming the genome is 50% GC, that would mean an average of 19.5 carbons per base pair. The human genome is roughly 3 billion basepairs long... so I'd estimate in round numbers that there are about 58.5 billion carbon atoms in the genomic DNA of a single human cell.

Answer 2

DNA contains four types of nitrogenous bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. None of these bases contain carbons. However, the sugar component of DNA is deoxyribose, which is a pentose sugar containing five carbons.