What kind of dna do you look at? (plant, animal ect.)

Question: What kind of dna do you look at? (plant, animal ect.)
- Keywords:
  DNA
Asked by anon-175965 to Mark on 10 Jun 2018.
- Mark Kirkwood answered on 10 Jun 2018:
  
  Hi Rcorb, thanks for the question!
  
  I look at bacterial DNA, mostly Salmonella, which is one of the food pathogens (disease causing bacterium) you hear about causing food poisoning, usually from under cooked pork products or eggs.
  
  They have genomes (the thing that holds all the genes they need to do everything) that are around 5 million base pairs (the building blocks of DNA) long. In comparison, we humans have at least 3 BILLION base pairs!
  
  They organise their genome into basically one big circle, all bunched up (called the chromosome), sometimes with some extra small circles called plasmids. The plasmids are the bits that can be swapped between different bacteria to make them really good at fighting off things like antibiotics, that we might try and use to kill them. Kind of like loading up new apps onto your smart phone, and swapping them in and out based on which ones you want or can fit in because of storage space.
  
  Hope that answers your question!
  
  Mark

Question: What kind of dna do you look at? (plant, animal ect.)