![]() ![]() When you eat and digest DNA it seems that the long coding sequences, the narratives or the apps that specify gene products, are so cut up that they can no longer function as genetic material. Imagine you dropped a smartphone in a blender or ate it (please don’t) – all the components would be mashed up. Your teeth mash it up and enzymes throughout your digestive tract cut it to pieces.Įnzymes produced by your pancreas called DNases are specially designed to break the DNA into tiny pieces that can be taken up into your blood and then carried around and used by other cells to build new molecular structures in your body – including possibly your own DNA.Ĭould any of the genes, from any of the organisms you eat, get into your DNA and do you harm? It’s a reasonable question, but the answer seems to be no. Can DNA from food get into my own DNA?īasically, DNA, like proteins and complex carbohydrates, gets broken down into pieces – this is what digestion is all about. If you eat a three course meal – oysters for starters, chicken and asparagus as a main, and fruit salad for dessert, you are eating lots of different DNA. They could also identify a lettuce or a strawberry from a leaf or from the fruit. ![]() This is why police can identify suspects from either a drop of blood or a hair root at a crime scene. The only living parts that don’t contain DNA are things like egg whites or filtered milk that are there for energy storage, or blood juices in which our blood cells float.ĭNA is pushed out of hair when it forms so hair doesn’t have much – if any – DNA, but hair roots do, and in mammals red blood cells (but not white blood cells) push out their DNA as they mature so they can squeeze along tiny blood vessels.īut most parts of animals and plants are made up of cells containing DNA. So whether you are a vegetarian who eats lettuce and cauliflower or an omnivore who eats steak and kidney pies, you are eating cells, and each cell contains DNA which in turn contains the entire genetic information or the whole genome of each species you eat. In plants, different apps (genes) are on in leaves and roots but all the cells of a plant carry the same set of genes, i.e. Think of genes as different apps on a smartphone – so all the smartphones that make up your liver will have one set of apps on, and your muscle cells will be using a different set of apps. In complex organisms each cell has the same DNA but interestingly different genes are active in different bodily organs. So each block is more like a smartphone than a balloon – each block has its own computer code or DNA genome. In a sense, we are all like Lego constructions.Īnd here’s the amazing part – virtually every cell has its own DNA (its own genetic information or genome) and each cell in your body carries your genome. Cats are bigger than mice because they have more cells. Bacteria are single-celled organisms, most animals and plants are multi-celled organisms. Organisms are not built of continuous matter like plasticine, we are made up of tiny balloons called cells.Īncient stories describe how people were fashioned from clay but actually it is more like being made of Lego blocks. ![]() I am sure because nearly all the food we eat contains DNA and lots of it. ![]()
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