My science teacher told us that all mammals have round about the same number of genes. This confuses me, since there are very big and very small mammals. Where do genes come from and why do animals have such large differences in size between one another even if they have around the same amount of genes?
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1$\begingroup$ @stormy The comments are not a place to talk about pet theories, especially those unrelated to the question. Please only use comments to improve questions and answers. $\endgroup$– Bryan Krause ♦Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 22:27
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1$\begingroup$ @stormy Science isn't based on what you find fascinating, it is based on empirical observation. Plant DNA does not have 99% of the information that human DNA has, nor 99% of what a bacterium has. $\endgroup$– Bryan Krause ♦Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 22:33
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Genes are the "plans" for proteins in an organism; in turn, those proteins do all sorts of things, catalyzing chemical reactions and making up much of the structure of an organism.
A hippo is much bigger than a mouse, but it isn't that much more complex: both are going to have the same sorts of organs like a heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, brain. If you look at an individual cell from each animal from the same tissue, they will probably look almost identical! They are going to have similar metabolic pathways, etc. Their genes will be different, because some differences in proteins are necessary to build organisms of different structure and size, but the number of genes doesn't have to vary much, the hippo just needs to produce a lot more of the gene products, not have more plans.
A hippo will of course have way more genetic material, because it also has more cells and there is a copy of the DNA in every cell, but what your teacher is talking about is the number of genes within each cell.
Ultimately, genes come from evolution. You can read more about the basics of evolution somewhere like Berkeley's Evolution 101.
answered Nov 6, 2018 at 22:03
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1$\begingroup$ @stormy Ok first, what does 'asteroid mimi' have to do with this answer? Second, if organisms didn't evolve, why are all organisms different? Third, DNA that'll never be used? Fourth, how can a virus seed life with DNA? $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 23:36