17 Chromosome
Chromosome 17 exhibits some remarkable qualities. With the second highest gene density of all the chromosomes, it is full of protein-coding genes and houses several that are associated with human disease, such as BRCA1, a gene implicated in early onset breast cancer, and NF1, a gene involved in neurofibromatosis.
The chromosome also ranks third highest among human autosomes for its load of segmental duplications - stretches of DNA that share highly similar sequences, a signature of their common origin. Perhaps the most striking feature though, relates less to the chromosome's ranking among its human counterparts than to its stature relative to the chromosomes of the mouse. It shares its roots with just a single mouse chromosome, chromosome 11, and is the largest human autosome to have such singular origins. Relative to their mammalian ancestors, human chromosomes typically have undergone less shuffling during the course of evolution than their mouse counterparts. But chromosome 17 is a notable exception - it has endured extensive internal rearrangements, while the corresponding region in the mouse (and in other mammals) has remained largely untouched. On the heels of this observation follows another surprising find: though the human 17 chromosome is overflowing with segmental duplications, its genetic cousin has very few. In humans, this architecture of duplication and rearrangement has drastic consequences. It can increase the chromosome's fragility, making it prone to abnormal recombination events, and often results in the misplacement of important genetic instructions, which can lead to disease.
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17 Chromosome
represents between 2.5% and 3%. People normally have two copies of this
chromosome as all other non-sex chromosomes. Chromosome seventeen spans about
79 million base pairs. Base Pairs are two molecules (nucleotides) on
opposite DNA strands that are connected. Adenine (A) forms a base pair with
thymine (T), as does guanine (G) with cytosine (C) in DNA. Base pairs is how DNA is measured.
There are about 1,469 genes in this chromosome.