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In DNA double helix, the two strands of DNA are held together by hydrogen bonds. The nucleotides on one strand base pairs with the nucleotide on the other strand. The secondary structure is responsible for the shape that the nucleic acid assumes. The bases in the DNA are classified as purines and pyrimidines. The purines are adenine and guanine ...
In nucleic acid, nucleobases are held together by hydrogen bonding, which only works efficiently between adenine and thymine and between guanine and cytosine. The base complement A = T shares two hydrogen bonds, while the base pair G ≡ C has three hydrogen bonds. All other configurations between nucleobases would hinder double helix formation.
The artificial strings of DNA do not encode for anything yet, but scientists speculate they could be designed to manufacture new proteins which could have industrial or pharmaceutical uses. [32] Experts said the synthetic DNA incorporating the unnatural base pair raises the possibility of life forms based on a different DNA code. [31] [32]
Nucleic acids are generally very large molecules. Indeed, DNA molecules are probably the largest individual molecules known. Well-studied biological nucleic acid molecules range in size from 21 nucleotides (small interfering RNA) to large chromosomes (human chromosome 1 is a single molecule that contains 247 million base pairs [18]).
Most DNA molecules are actually two polymer strands, bound together in a helical fashion by noncovalent bonds; this double-stranded (dsDNA) structure is maintained largely by the intrastrand base stacking interactions, which are strongest for G,C stacks. The two strands can come apart—a process known as melting—to form two single-stranded ...
The double helix is an important tertiary structure in nucleic acid molecules which is intimately connected with the molecule's secondary structure. A double helix is formed by regions of many consecutive base pairs. The nucleic acid double helix is a spiral polymer, usually right-handed, containing two nucleotide strands which base pair together.
The double-helix model of DNA structure was first published in the journal Nature by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, [6] (X,Y,Z coordinates in 1954 [7]) based on the work of Rosalind Franklin and her student Raymond Gosling, who took the crucial X-ray diffraction image of DNA labeled as "Photo 51", [8] [9] and Maurice Wilkins, Alexander Stokes, and Herbert Wilson, [10] and base-pairing ...
DNA is transcribed into mRNA molecules, which travel to the ribosome where the mRNA is used as a template for the construction of the protein strand. Since nucleic acids can bind to molecules with complementary sequences, there is a distinction between " sense " sequences which code for proteins, and the complementary "antisense" sequence ...