What it means to share DNA with other organisms

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We share 60% of our DNA with bananas, but we are clearly not 60% banana.

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DNA contains the instructions for making proteins, which are very important molecules in biology that generally do most of the “heavy lifting” of keeping things running. Basically every living thing we have encountered so far is made of cells that all have roughly the same fundamental components, which means a ton of the same proteins are used for general functions like moving food around the cell, breaking down sugars, controlling cell division signals, etc., regardless of if you are a yeast cell or a plant cell or a human cell.

You can think of it kind of like Lego pieces shared between the Death Star set and a soccer stadium set. They are two very different structures, but they are both going to use a ton of the 2×2, 2×4, and other super common brick types (but maybe different colors). By shape alone, it’s very possible 60% of the brick shapes in one set are also found in the other set.

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