News tagged with double helix
Study shows how DNA finds its match
It's been more than 50 years since James Watson and Francis Crick showed that DNA is a double helix of two strands that complement each other. But how does a short piece of DNA find its match, out of the millions ...
Feb 08, 2012 |
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Scientists show how men amp up their X chromosome
What makes a man? His clothes? His car? His choice of scotch? The real answer, says Brown University biologist Erica Larschan, is the newly understood activity of a protein complex that, like a genetic power tool, gives enzymes ...
Mar 02, 2011 |
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DNA and the 'magic rings' trick
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study from UC Davis shows how, like a conjuring trick with interlocking rings, two interlocked pieces of DNA are separated after DNA is copied or repaired. The finding was published online Oct. 10 in ...
Oct 11, 2010 |
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Unread correspondence of Francis Crick: New twists in double helix discovery story are uncovered
The story of the double helix's discovery has a few new twists. A new primary source -- a never-before-read stack of letters to and from Francis Crick, and other historical materials dating from the years 1950-76 -- has ...
Sep 29, 2010 |
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DNA could be backbone of next generation logic chips
(PhysOrg.com) -- In a single day, a solitary grad student at a lab bench can produce more simple logic circuits than the world's entire output of silicon chips in a month.
Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine
May 11, 2010 |
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Unselfish molecules may have helped give birth to the genetic material of life (w/ Video)
One of the biggest questions facing scientists today is how life began. How did non-living molecules come together in that primordial ooze to form the polymers of life? Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have ...
Mar 08, 2010 |
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Scientists crash test DNA's replication machinery
(PhysOrg.com) -- Important molecular machines routinely crash into one another while plying their trades on DNA. New research shows that the enzymes that copy DNA before cell division, called replisomes, are the kings of ...
Feb 10, 2010 |
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Scientists decipher the 3-D structure of the human genome
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have deciphered the three-dimensional structure of the human genome, paving the way for new insights into genomic function and expanding our understanding of how cellular DNA folds ...
Oct 08, 2009 |
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Chemists Reach from the Molecular to the Real World with Creation of 3-D DNA Crystals
(PhysOrg.com) -- New York University chemists have created three-dimensional DNA structures, a breakthrough bridging the molecular world to the world where we live. The work, reported in the latest issue of ...
Sep 02, 2009 |
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Gene transcribing machine takes halting, backsliding trip along the DNA
(PhysOrg.com) -- The body's nanomachines that read our genes don't run as smoothly as previously thought, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
Jul 30, 2009 |
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Chemists create bipedal, autonomous DNA walker
Chemists at New York University and Harvard University have created a bipedal, autonomous DNA "walker" that can mimic a cell's transportation system. The device, which marks a step toward more complex synthetic molecular ...
Apr 02, 2009 |
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A new dimension to DNA and personalized medicine of the future
(Phys.org) -- By investigating the existence of an unusual four-stranded structure of DNA in human cells, scientists have opened the door to novel cancer therapeutics and a new era for personalised medicine.
May 16, 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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Study reveals how protein machinery binds and wraps DNA to start replication
(PhysOrg.com) -- Before any cell - healthy or cancerous - can divide, it has to replicate its DNA. So scientists who want to know how normal cells work - and perhaps how to stop abnormal ones - are keen to ...
Mar 06, 2012 |
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New molecule has potential to help treat genetic diseases and HIV
(PhysOrg.com) -- Chemists at The University of Texas at Austin have created a molecule that's so good at tangling itself inside the double helix of a DNA sequence that it can stay there for up to 16 days before ...
Feb 13, 2012 |
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Double helix
In geometry a double helix (plural helices) typically consists of two congruent helices with the same axis, differing by a translation along the axis, which may or may not be half-way.
The term "double helix" is commonly encountered in molecular biology, where it refers to the structure of DNA. The double-helix model of DNA structure was first published in the journal Nature by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, based upon the crucial X-ray diffraction image of DNA (labeled as "Photo 51") from Rosalind Franklin in 1952 , followed by her more clarified DNA image with Raymond Gosling, Maurice Wilkins, Alexander Stokes and Herbert Wilson, as well as base-pairing chemical and biochemical information by Erwin Chargaff.
Crick, Wilkins and Watson each received one third of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their contributions to the discovery. (Franklin, whose breakthrough X-ray diffraction data was used to formulate the DNA structure, died in 1958, and thus was ineligible to be nominated for a Nobel Prize.)
The DNA double helix is a right-handed spiral polymer of nucleic acids, held together by nucleotides which base pair together. A single turn of the helix constitutes ten nucleotides. The double helix structure of DNA contains a major groove and minor groove, the major groove being wider than the minor groove. Given the difference in widths of the major groove and minor groove, many proteins which bind to DNA do so through the wider major groove .
The order, or sequence, of the nucleotides in the double helix within a gene specifies the primary structure of a protein.
The term entered popular culture with the publication in 1968 of The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, by James Watson.
For more information about Double helix, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
