But an onion isn't very complex either, and it has more than 12 times as much DNA as a Harvard professor. What's more, amoebas oozing along in shallow ponds boast a genome 200 times as large as those of Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking.
Paris japonica, the Japanese canopy plant, has the largest genome of any organism analysed to date. At 149,000 million base pairs (mega bp or Mbp) of DNA, it's about 50 times bigger than the human genome.
In 1951, two scientists measured the DNA in cells from 54 species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds. Salamanders had dozens of times more DNA than humans and other animals.
Since the onion (Allium cepa) is a diploid organism having a haploid genome size of 15.9 Gb, it has 4.9x as much DNA as does a human genome (3.2 Gb).
The tiny water flea Daphnia has the most genes of any animal, some 31,000.
Humans and chimps share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA.
We know the genetic difference between sexes is around one in 20,000. We know chimps and bonobos share 99% of our genes. More startling is an even newer discovery: we share 99% of our DNA with lettuce.
Banana: more than 60 percent identical
Many of the “housekeeping” genes that are necessary for basic cellular function, such as for replicating DNA, controlling the cell cycle, and helping cells divide are shared between many plants (including bananas) and animals.
We do in fact share about 50% of our genes with plants – including bananas.” “Bananas have 44.1% of genetic makeup in common with humans.”
But when it comes to seeing which fruit or vegetable has the most DNA, it would be Plum because it had the most DNA out of all the fruits and when we compared it to the vegetable that had the most DNA out of all the vegetables, the Plum had more.
4. It's probably not that surprising to learn that humans share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees–but incredibly, we also share 70% with slugs and 50% with bananas.
The Australian lungfish has the largest genome of any animal so far sequenced.
Whereas most species, including humans, are diploid with two copies of the genome – one copy from each parent – strawberry is an octoploid, with eight complete copies of the genome that were contributed by multiple, distinct parental species.
In genetics, the term junk DNA refers to regions of DNA that are noncoding. DNA contains instructions (coding) that are used to create proteins in the cell. However, the amount of DNA contained inside each cell is vast and not all of the genetic sequences present within a DNA molecule actually code for a protein.
They found that an apple has 57,386 genes, more than twice the number in the human genome due to the duplicated origin of the apple's genome which created more 'junk' DNA. The sequencing of its genome was a fundamental step in understanding the entire biological life of the apple.
Scientists have decoded the genetic make-up of corn and found the humble vegetable contains more genes than humans. The researchers discovered that a stalk of corn contains around 32,000 genes.
As a result, we share roughly 90 percent of our DNA with mice, dogs, cattle, and elephants. Coming closer to home, the DNA of human beings and chimpanzees is 98 to 99 percent identical. The differences between us that we (and presumably the chimps) regard as significant depend on only 1 or 2 percent of our DNA.
We share 40% of our protein making genes with humans. - Well, protein genes only account for about 1% of a humans DNA. The remaining 99% is a critical difference. So humans are not bananas.
Identical twins are the only siblings that share 100% of their DNA.
Ever since researchers sequenced the chimp genome in 2005, they have known that humans share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living relatives.
Our feline friends share 90% of homologous genes with us, with dogs it is 82%, 80% with cows, 69% with rats and 67% with mice [1]. Human and chimpanzee DNA is so similar because the two species are so closely related.
Outwardly, fruit flies and humans have little in common. It is all the more astonishing that roughly 60 percent of the fly's genes can also be found in humans in a similar form.
Humans are 99.9% identical on a genetic level. The 0.1% difference is caused by insertions, deletions and substitutions in the DNA sequence. These substitutions are known as Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). They occur about every 1000 base pairs.
Bovines share 80 percent of their genes with humans; cows are less similar to humans than rodents (humans and rodents belong to the clade of Supraprimates) and dogs (humans and dogs belong to the clade of Boreoeutheria).
The genetic DNA similarity between pigs and human beings is 98%. Interspecies organ transplant activities between humans and pigs have even taken place, called xenotransplants.