Chromosomes can be divided into two types--autosomes, and sex chromosomes. Certain genetic traits are linked to your sex, and are passed on through the sex chromosomes. The autosomes contain the rest of the genetic hereditary information. All act in the same way during cell division.
Human cells have 23 pairs of large linear nuclear chromosomes, (22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes) giving a total of 46 per cell. In addition to these, human cells have many hundreds of copies of the mitochondrial genome.
The 22 autosomes are numbered by size. The other two
chromosomes, X and Y, are the sex chromosomes. This picture of the human chromosomes lined up in pairs is called a karyotype. Image Credit: U.S. National Library of Medicine
Sequencing of the human genome has provided a great deal of information about each of the chromosomes. Below is a table compiling statistics for the chromosomes, based on the Sanger Institute's human genome information in the Vertebrate Genome Annotation (VEGA) database.
Number of genes is an estimate as it is in part based on gene predictions. Total chromosome length is an estimate as well, based on the estimated size of unsequenced heterochromatin regions.
| Chromosome | Genes | Total bases | Sequenced bases |
|---|
| 1 | 4,220 | 247,199,719 | 224,999,719 |
| 2 | 1,491 | 242,751,149 | 237,712,649 |
| 3 | 1,550 | 199,446,827 | 194,704,827 |
| 4 | 446 | 191,263,063 | 187,297,063 |
| 5 | 609 | 180,837,866 | 177,702,766 |
| 6 | 2,281 | 170,896,993 | 167,273,993 |
| 7 | 2,135 | 158,821,424 | 154,952,424 |
| 8 | 1,106 | 146,274,826 | 142,612,826 |
| 9 | 1,920 | 140,442,298 | 120,312,298 |
| 10 | 1,793 | 135,374,737 | 131,624,737 |
| 11 | 379 | 134,452,384 | 131,130,853 |
| 12 | 1,430 | 132,289,534 | 130,303,534 |
| 13 | 924 | 114,127,980 | 95,559,980 |
| 14 | 1,347 | 106,360,585 | 88,290,585 |
| 15 | 921 | 100,338,915 | 81,341,915 |
| 16 | 909 | 88,822,254 | 78,884,754 |
| 17 | 1,672 | 78,654,742 | 77,800,220 |
| 18 | 519 | 76,117,153 | 74,656,155 |
| 19 | 1,555 | 63,806,651 | 55,785,651 |
| 20 | 1,008 | 62,435,965 | 59,505,254 |
| 21 | 578 | 46,944,323 | 34,171,998 |
| 22 | 1,092 | 49,528,953 | 34,893,953 |
| X (sex chromosome) | 1,846 | 154,913,754 | 151,058,754 |
| Y (sex chromosome) | 454 | 57,741,652 | 25,121,652 |
| Total | 32,185 | 3,079,843,747 | 2,857,698,560 |
|---|
Further Reading
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