Flexi Says: In a sense, all known living organisms on Earth are the same because they all use the same genetic material (DNA and RNA), with the same genetic code. The genetic code is the way of translating information from DNA to build proteins that form structures and run the reactions of life (metabolism). All organisms are made of cells, and all cells have some basic shared structures and processes. This shows that all organisms share a common evolutionary history.
Yet in another sense, each individual organism is unique because it inherits and activates different genes. In the case of individuals of the same species, these variations are slight and produce minor variations in traits. For example, individual humans share 99.9% of their genes with one another. Very different species have much greater variation in genes, though some genes for basic cell structures and processes are shared between very different organisms. For example, humans and bananas share between 17-24% of genes.
