The four substances DNA bases are made of, and their abbreviations, are: Adenine (A), Cytosine (C), Guanine (G), and Thymine (T). These bases pair together (called the obvious name of DNA base pairing, or base pairs) to form a whole base or rung of the ladder. Each of these substances has its separate purpose and each needs its pairing with a similar yet opposite substance, just as the two DNA backbones run in opposite directions to complement and complete each other. In a DNA base pairing, only two bases are meant for each other, to complement each other, hence another term used - complementary base pairings: Adenine always links up with Thymine, and Quanine always links with Cytosine, these DNA base pairings never mix with each other in any other configuration. So each rung or base is either an adenine-thymine pairing or a quanine-cytosine pairing.
DNA in different organisms is constructed of different numbers of nucleotides, so each DNA strand will be a different length and complexity according to which organism it is for. Humans are very complex organisms and a single one of our DNA strands contains a few BILLION nucleotides, while simpler life forms will have DNA strands with fewer, into the millions or less. The more body parts you have, and the more intricate their functions have to be, and the more details they have, the more 'information' your DNA sequence needs to hold, since more complex blueprints are needed for more complex structures, right?
We have so many nucleotides, a single strand of human DNA stretches to about seven feet, if laid out straight! Yet it is so thin that even 'bunched up', curled up around itself, you can't even see it as a tiny dot, without a powerful microscope. Let's blow that up into a larger picture: if that DNA strand were enlarged to around two inches wide, like a two-inch-wide ladder... it would stretch all the way around the equator of the earth! Now, that's a lot of information packed into a tiny, almost invisible strand!
Genetics is perhaps the largest of the DNA sequencing uses; genetics is the study of how DNA replicates and transfers from parent to offspring. Scientists study genetics to determine how DNA sequences change; how a strand of DNA sunders apart, or 'unzips', how new identical strands come together in DNA for one person, and how they come together differently for DNA that is being used to create offspring. Genetics determines how that offspring will look and operate; how your child will look the same as you, how they will look different than you, and how all their parts will be the same as and yet different from yours.
There are countless uses for DNA sequencing, with humans, animals, and plants, and the field of genetics is racing to unlock the secrets of DNA sequencing so they can discover what makes us what we are... and perhaps learn how to alter the building blocks of what we are... hopefully for the better.
DNA in different organisms is constructed of different numbers of nucleotides, so each DNA strand will be a different length and complexity according to which organism it is for. Humans are very complex organisms and a single one of our DNA strands contains a few BILLION nucleotides, while simpler life forms will have DNA strands with fewer, into the millions or less. The more body parts you have, and the more intricate their functions have to be, and the more details they have, the more 'information' your DNA sequence needs to hold, since more complex blueprints are needed for more complex structures, right?
We have so many nucleotides, a single strand of human DNA stretches to about seven feet, if laid out straight! Yet it is so thin that even 'bunched up', curled up around itself, you can't even see it as a tiny dot, without a powerful microscope. Let's blow that up into a larger picture: if that DNA strand were enlarged to around two inches wide, like a two-inch-wide ladder... it would stretch all the way around the equator of the earth! Now, that's a lot of information packed into a tiny, almost invisible strand!
Genetics is perhaps the largest of the DNA sequencing uses; genetics is the study of how DNA replicates and transfers from parent to offspring. Scientists study genetics to determine how DNA sequences change; how a strand of DNA sunders apart, or 'unzips', how new identical strands come together in DNA for one person, and how they come together differently for DNA that is being used to create offspring. Genetics determines how that offspring will look and operate; how your child will look the same as you, how they will look different than you, and how all their parts will be the same as and yet different from yours.
There are countless uses for DNA sequencing, with humans, animals, and plants, and the field of genetics is racing to unlock the secrets of DNA sequencing so they can discover what makes us what we are... and perhaps learn how to alter the building blocks of what we are... hopefully for the better.
