Structural Importance of DNA


DNA is said to be the hereditary material carrier of any living being. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid and is nearly the same in every cell of the human body. It’s one of the greatest abilities is to replicate and form the new strands which are complementary to the parent DNA strand or the template DNA. The location of the DNA is always determined to be in the nucleus but some small amount is also present in the mitochondria and in plants, it’s also present in the chloroplast. The mitochondria are the cell organelle that is responsible for the energy production in the cell whereas, the chloroplast is the cell organelle in plants that are responsible for the pigmentation of the plant leaves in turn is involved in photosynthesis. The genetic details are coded in the DNA as per the four nitrogenous Bases which are: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). The DNA of the human consists of 3 billion bases which are 99 percent the same in all human beings. The sequencing of the nitrogenous bases is responsible for the genetic information of an individual. It is very important to know that the pairing of the bases has its own rules and regulations for the arrangement of its sequences that's it always necessary for the cytosine to get paired with the guanine by forming a triple bond for its stability and adenine always needs to pair up with the thymine by forming the double bond for its stability. However, there is an exception for the RNA molecule as in the RNA molecule adenine binds with the uracil for its molecular stability via the double bond. The overall molecule of the DNA consists of the nitrogenous bases, sugar, and the phosphate group which is referred to as the nucleotides. The DNA is said to have a double-helical structure which is formed via the two long strands of the nucleotide in the spiral form. This structure is somewhat in the ladder form where all the nitrogenous bases are faced inwards of the double-helical structure of the two long nucleotides forming the helix, simultaneously, the sugar and phosphate form the backbone of the helical nucleotide; as informing the sidepieces of the ladder. As it has already been mentioned that bases are the primary factor for the determination of the genetic code that is encoded for the DNA. And these bases are able to form the helical structure of the DNA due to their hydrophobic nature which leads to the development of the hydrogen bonding among the nitrogenous bases via the hydrophobic interactions. The two nucleotides responsible for the helical form of DNA is due to its two strands which run opposite directions of each other which is the 3’-5’ prime direction. These two strands are twisted in such a manner leading to the formation of the right-handed coil in which every single turn consists of ten nucleotides.

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