What is the math behind Plague Inc DNA points?

First answer: When you're late in the game and a lot of people are dying you do get a lot of DNA points, more than any other time, this has to do with how orange bubbles appear based on your disease's severity, which will increase significantly as lethality does.

Second answer: It depends on what you're having trouble with. If you want to get a head start and are having problems evolving transmissions and such, use the boost. If you want more in the long run use the other DNA upgrades, and lastly, if don't want to bother going around and popping the bubbles yourself use the hijack, this doesn't give you a bonus, but it can save you the trouble of missing some when a bunch pop up at once.

For your first question, while I could not find any specific formula it seems that the more severe your plaque the more DNA points you get from both killing and infecting people. It also seems that it is not a consistent amount but instead has a slight variation for each point.

For your second question, while ATP boost adds 8 DNA points every game I could not find any specific numbers for the other ones on the wiki or anywhere else. Some forums I found seemed to say that both Cytochrome Surge and Metabolic Jump seem to about double the amount of DNA points earned.

Overall, it seems there is no real specific formula for DNA points, with it all being slightly randomized.

At the beginning of the game you will earn between 9-15 DNA Points. Income is then randomised (Not including red Infection bubbles), but an Orange bubble is guaranteed to spawn every 30 seconds for the first 3 minutes.

After infecting 1 Billion people, the passive-style income (similar to what you get at the start of the game) will resume for a little while, netting you a total of up to 35 points.

If you don't spend at all and infect every human, you will usually end up with 120-150 DNA Points.

Hope this helps!

How the red bubble works is very simple, the more severity your plague has the more dna you get from popping red bubbles up to 5 which is why you need high severity before even the end game to beat mega brutal and is the best strategy to beat all difficulties because you get so much dna that the cure starting early is not a huge threat the biggest threat is getting into ports but you have so many points that sometimes you might have too much.

Now the dna bubble I think it is base on how long since you started the game since in the beginning you get a lot more dna bubble than at the end of the game