News tagged with dna
Researchers develop nanodevice manufacturing strategy using DNA 'building blocks'
Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a method for building complex nanostructures out of short synthetic strands of DNA. Called single-stranded ...
Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine
24 minutes ago |
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Researchers demonstrate possible primitive mechanism of chemical info self-replication
(Phys.org) -- When scientists think about the replication of information in chemistry, they usually have in mind something akin to what happens in living organisms when DNA gets copied: a double-stranded molecule ...
May 25, 2012 |
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16th-century Korean mummy provides clue to hepatitis B virus genetic code
The discovery of a mummified Korean child with relatively preserved organs enabled an Israeli-South Korean scientific team to conduct a genetic analysis on a liver biopsy which revealed a unique hepatitis ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
May 29, 2012 |
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Totally rad: Scientists create rewritable digital data storage in DNA
(Phys.org) -- Scientists from Stanford's Department of Bioengineering have devised a method for repeatedly encoding, storing and erasing digital data within the DNA of living cells.
May 21, 2012 |
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Project to examine 'Yeti' DNA
(Phys.org) -- A new collaboration between Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology will use the latest genetic techniques to investigate organic remains that some have claimed belong to the ‘Yeti’ ...
May 23, 2012 |
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Nanofluidics sorts DNA for cancer research
(Phys.org) -- Cornell nanotechnology researchers have devised a new tool to study epigenetic changes in DNA that can cause cancer and other diseases: a nanoscale fluidic device that sorts and collects DNA, ...
Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine
May 24, 2012 |
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Discarded data may hold the key to a sharper view of molecules
(Phys.org) -- There's nothing like a new pair of eyeglasses to bring fine details into sharp relief. For scientists who study the large molecules of life from proteins to DNA, the equivalent of new lenses have come in the ...
May 24, 2012 |
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New technique reveals unseen information in DNA code
Imagine reading an entire book, but then realizing that your glasses did not allow you to distinguish "g" from "q." What details did you miss? Geneticists faced a similar problem with the recent discovery ...
May 17, 2012 |
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Velvet spiders emerge from underground in new cybertaxonomic monograph
Velvet spiders include some of the most beautiful arachnids in Europe and some of the world's most cooperative species. Social species can be very abundant in parts of tropical Africa and Asia with conspicuous co ...
May 23, 2012 |
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Sequence it ... and they will come
Rapid DNA sequencing may soon become a routine part of each individual’s medical record, providing enormous information previously sequestered in the human genome’s 3 billion nucleotide bases. This ...
Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine
May 22, 2012 |
4 / 5 (7) |
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New latent tuberculosis test promises to be cheap and fast
Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a microfluidic chip to test for latent tuberculosis. They hope the test will be cheaper, faster and more reliable than current testing for the disease.
May 22, 2012 |
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Research uncovers new exception to decades-old rule about RNA splicing
There are always exceptions to a rule, even one that has prevailed for more than three decades, as demonstrated by a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) study on RNA splicing, a cellular editing process. The rule-flaunting ...
May 17, 2012 |
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In cod we trust: DNA test combats fisheries fraud
Scientists on Tuesday said they had devised a DNA test to pinpoint the geographical origins of commercial seafish, in a breakthrough against illegal trawling that threatens fish stocks worldwide.
May 22, 2012 |
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Does polyploidy play a role in the onset of the Italian endemic flora?
Besides the obvious differences between plants and animals, subtle ones lie concealed within the cell, even within the nucleus. In both plant and animal cells, the nucleus contains DNA, which condenses into ...
May 22, 2012 |
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Enzyme corrects more than one million faults in DNA replication
Scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM) at the University of Edinburgh have discovered an enzyme that corrects the most common mistake in mammalian DNA.
May 10, 2012 |
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DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints or a recipe, or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information.
Chemically, DNA consists of two long polymers of simple units called nucleotides, with backbones made of sugars and phosphate groups joined by ester bonds. These two strands run in opposite directions to each other and are therefore anti-parallel. Attached to each sugar is one of four types of molecules called bases. It is the sequence of these four bases along the backbone that encodes information. This information is read using the genetic code, which specifies the sequence of the amino acids within proteins. The code is read by copying stretches of DNA into the related nucleic acid RNA, in a process called transcription.
Within cells, DNA is organized into X-shaped structures called chromosomes. These chromosomes are duplicated before cells divide, in a process called DNA replication. Eukaryotic organisms (animals, plants, fungi, and protists) store most of their DNA inside the cell nucleus and some of their DNA in the mitochondria (animals and plants) and chloroplasts (plants only). Prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) however, store their DNA in the cell's cytoplasm. Within the chromosomes, chromatin proteins such as histones compact and organize DNA. These compact structures guide the interactions between DNA and other proteins, helping control which parts of the DNA are transcribed.
For more information about DNA, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
