Question 23: The two strands in DNA are not identical but are complementary. Explain.
Answer:
DNA is a long polymer of deoxyribonucleotide. The chemical structure of nucleotides has three components. Nitrogenous bases, pentose sugar and a phosphate group. There are two types of Nitrogenous bases: purine and pyrimidines. Purines are Adenine (A) and Guanine (G) and Pyrimidine are Cytosine (C), Uracil (U) and Thymine (T). Out of these nitrogenous bases only 4 are present in DNA and RNA, In DNA Adenine is paired with Thymine by double hydrogen bond (A=T) whereas cytosine is coupled with Guanine by triple hydrogen bond (C=G, G=C). These nitrogenous bases are linked with pentose sugar through N-glycosidic linkage and form a structure called nucleoside.
Nucleoside when linked with (PO4) phosphate group through phosphodiester linkage. Combination of nucleotides with phosphate groups form the basic unit of nucleic acid called nucleotides. These nucleotides are linked together through phosphodiester bonds to form a long chain or backbone of DNA double helical structure. DNA was first identified by Friedrich Meischer in 1865 whereas its double helical structure was revealed by James watson and Francis crick. The base pairing confers a very unique property of the polynucleotide chain: each strand of DNA is complementary to each other. Therefore the sequence of bases in one strand is known then the sequence in other DNA can be determined with a template or mother strand that synthesizes the new daughter strand the process is known as DNA replication. This process requires a set of enzymes that catalyses the reaction. The double helical structure unwinds and forms a fork-like structure known as a replication fork. The DNA polymerase catalyses the polymerisahy only in one direction, that is 5’-3’. From two DNA strands which have polarity of 3’-5' act as mother or template stanels and new strand synthesis in opposite polarity of 5’-3’. Lets understand through this example:
As we know double hydrogen (Adenine) A=T (Thymine),
(Cytosine) C=G (Guanine) two DNA strand are said to be complementary to each other.
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