DNA content of cells - reply

From: Antony Bakke (bakkea@ohsu.edu)
Date: Thu Nov 20 1997 - 17:07:51 EST


David Lloyd summarized the replies he had received concerning DNA content of
normal lymphocytes.  The reported values varied from 3 to 8 pg of DNA per cell
or 3.3 e9 base pairs of DNA.  These are not actually conflicting values.  3.3 e9
bp calculates to 3.6 pg of DNA, BUT this is a haploid genome, since molecular
biologists work in haploid amounts of DNA.  Therefore, the diploid value would
be 7.2 pg/cell and this is the total, nuclear DNA content of a normal, human
lymphocyte.

Hope this helps,
Tony Bakke, PhD
Director, Clinical Immunology and Flow Cytometry Lab
Oregon Health Sciences University 



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 03 2002 - 11:50:21 EST