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DNA FAQ

DNA FAQ

DNA is a short notation for Deoxyribosenucleic Acid. DNA is located in all living things. It holds all the information about who we are. DNA knows how to makes copies of itself through a process called replication.

Cool Facts

* Nearly every one of the trillions of cells in your body contains DNA.
* Your DNA is different from every other person in the world, unless you are an identical twin. Then your twin and you share the same DNA.
* Your DNA holds the information about what you look like. Your DNA determines your eye color, hair color, and many other characteristics.
* If we combined the DNA from all of our trillions of cells in our bodies, it would Read More …

DNA

I would suggest using wire or pipe cleaners as a framework, and using beads, candies with holes, colored marshmallows, or some other item that you can support on the framework to represent sugars, phosphate groups, and the four nitrogenous bases. That means you need six different colors or shapes, and a way to hold them together and support them. You also need to show that the DNA strands are anti-parallel and that they are joined by the appropriate number of bonds between bases. Bases must also be attached to the sugars, not the phosphates, and base pairing rules must be followed. Finally, the model must show the helical shape of DNA.

DNA Structure

DNA Structure

While DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) is the building block of very complex organisms, such as humans, its basic structure is fairly simple. DNA is made up of three different molecules: a 5-carbon sugar (deoxyribose), a phosphate group, and a nitrogen base. These three molecules together compose what is called a nucleotide. Four different nucleotides make up all DNA, which only differ by their nitrogen base group. Thus, the nucleotides are named for their nitrogen group. The four different nucleotides are adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T).

These nucleotides arrange themselves in an interesting shape called a double helix. This looks like a ladder, where the two sides are coiled around one another. The sides of the ladder are formed by the sugar and phosphate groups of the nucleotides, which bond together linearly. The nitrogen base group sticks out from this chain, and bonds together with a base of another string of nucleotides