Quantitative data

Genomes

Species	Haploid genome size (Mb)	Haploid chromosome number	% coding DNA
E.Coli (bacteria)	4	1 (circular)	100
S. cerevisae (yeast)	12	16	70
C. elegans (worm)	100	7	25
A. thaliana (weed)	130	5	31
D. melanogaster (fruit fly)	170	4	33
Gallus domesticus (chicken)	1,200	39
M. musculus (mouse)	3,000	20
H. sapiens (human)	3,000	23	15
Zea mays (maize)	5,000	10
Allium cepa (onion)	15,000	8
Fritillaria (plant)			0.02
Protopterus (lungfish)	140,000		0.7

RNA

Type	Length (nucleotides)	Proportion in rapidly growing mammalian cell
mRNA	100 - 10,000	5%
tdNA	100	15%
rRNA	2,000 - 5,000	80%

Cell content: E. coli

The bacterium E. coli, of volume 1 micro m^3, is filled by cytoplasm, a crowd of molecules in thermal motion. There are about:

300,000 (non ribosomal) proteins of about 10 microns in diameters,
20,000 ribosomes (25 % of the cytoplasmic volume),
300,000 tRNA,
a couple of thousands mRNA molecules,
50,000,000 small organic molecules including amino-acids, nucleotides, sugars, ATPs, etc..

The 70% of the volume is taken by 20,000,000,000 water molecules. The average gap between ribosomes are about their own size, and the gap between (globular) proteins are about twice their size. Proteins constantly hit each other and run into ribosomes, with small molecules snicking in the gaps between them.

Jean-Philippe Vert

Back to my Short Notes pages