Table of Contents
What are DNA parts called?
nucleotides
DNA is made of chemical building blocks called nucleotides. These building blocks are made of three parts: a phosphate group, a sugar group and one of four types of nitrogen bases.
What are all the parts of the DNA strand called?
Each DNA strand is composed of nucleotides—units made up of a sugar (deoxyribose), a phosphate group, and a nitrogenous base. Each strand of DNA is a polynucleotide composed of units called nucleotides. A nucleotide has three components: a sugar molecule, a phosphate group, and a nitrogenous base.
What is half of a DNA strand called?
The term semiconservative refers to the fact that half of the original molecule (one of the two strands in the double helix) is “conserved” in the new molecule. The original strand is referred to as the template strand because it provides the information, or template, for the newly synthesized strand.
Why is replication called semi conservative?
This process is known as semi-conservative replication because two copies of the original DNA molecule are produced, each copy conserving (replicating) the information from one half of the original DNA molecule. Each copy contains one original strand and one newly-synthesized strand.
What are the rungs of the DNA ladder called?
The rungs of the ladder are pairs of 4 types of nitrogen bases. Two of the bases are purines- adenine and guanine. The pyrimidines are thymine and cytosine. The bases are known by their coded letters A, G, T, C.
What forms the rungs of DNA?
Deoxyribose and phosphate molecules form the uprights and nucleotide pair form the rungs of the DNA ladder.
What is A strand of DNA made of?
The DNA molecule consists of two strands that wind around one another to form a shape known as a double helix. Each strand has a backbone made of alternating sugar (deoxyribose) and phosphate groups. Attached to each sugar is one of four bases–adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T).
Which part of the ladder is these bases?
rungs
These bases are the rungs of the DNA ladder. (It takes two bases to form a rung — one for each side of the ladder.) A sugar molecule, a base, and a phosphate molecule group together to make up a nucleotide.
What are the two strands of DNA called?
The two DNA strands are also known as polynucleotides as they are composed of simpler monomeric units called nucleotides. The two strands of DNA run in opposite directions to each other and are thus antiparallel. Attached to each sugar is one of four types of nucleobases (informally, bases).
What makes up the exterior of a DNA strand?
Nucleotides themselves are comprised of three joined parts: a sugar molecule, a phosphate group, and a nitrogenous base. The sugars of one nucleotide link to the phosphates of the adjacent nucleotide to form the exterior of the DNA strand, known as the sugar-phosphate backbone.
How are the nucleotides of DNA held together?
Strands of DNA are made of the sugar and phosphate portions of the nucleotides, while the middle parts are made of the nitrogenous bases. The nitrogenous bases on the two strands of DNA pair up, purine with pyrimidine (A with T, G with C), and are held together by weak hydrogen bonds.
Where are the nitrogen bases found in a strand of DNA?
To form a strand of DNA, nucleotides are linked into chains, with the phosphate and sugar groups alternating. The four types of nitrogen bases found in nucleotides are: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). The order, or sequence, of these bases determines what biological instructions are contained in a strand of DNA.