DNA: Difference between revisions

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Ala Jelani, Eran Hodis, Eric Martz, Joel L. Sussman, Adithya Sagar, Wayne Decatur, David Canner, Angel Herraez, Frédéric Dardel, Karl Oberholser, Joseph M. Steinberger, Alexander Berchansky, Ann Taylor, Karsten Theis

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	Each of the cells in your body carries about 1.5 gigabytes of genetic information, stored as [[DNA]], an amount of information that would fill two CD ROMs or a small hard disk drive. Surprisingly, when placed in an appropriate egg cell, this amount of information is enough to build an entire living, breathing, thinking human being. Through the efforts of the international human genome sequencing projects, you can now read this information. Along with most of biological research community, you can marvel at the complexity of this information and try to understand what it means. At the same time, you can wonder at the simplicity of this information when compared to the intricacy of the human body.		Each of the cells in your body carries about 1.5 gigabytes of genetic information, stored as [[DNA]], an amount of information that would fill two CD ROMs or a small hard disk drive. Surprisingly, when placed in an appropriate egg cell, this amount of information is enough to build an entire living, breathing, thinking human being. Through the efforts of the international human genome sequencing projects, you can now read this information. Along with most of biological research community, you can marvel at the complexity of this information and try to understand what it means. At the same time, you can wonder at the simplicity of this information when compared to the intricacy of the human body.

	DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. Attached to a long <scene name='DNA/Dna_backbone/2'>backbone</scene> made up of sugars and phosphate groups, is a long polymer of <scene name='DNA/Dna_nucleotides_colored/3'>nucleotides</scene> (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine). DNA stores information via its sequence of nucleotides. Different DNA molecules will share the same backbone, but will have different sequences of nucleotides encoding different genetic information. The two strands of DNA are <scene name='DNA/Dna_backbone/3'>complementary</scene> to each other, and interact via <scene name='DNA/Dna_hydrogen_bond/2'>hydrogen bonds</scene>~~hydrogen bonds~~ between complementary nucleotides (adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine).		DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. Attached to a long <scene name='DNA/Dna_backbone/2'>backbone</scene> made up of sugars and phosphate groups, is a long polymer of <scene name='DNA/Dna_nucleotides_colored/3'>nucleotides</scene> (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine). DNA stores information via its sequence of nucleotides. Different DNA molecules will share the same backbone, but will have different sequences of nucleotides encoding different genetic information. The two strands of DNA are <scene name='DNA/Dna_backbone/3'>complementary</scene> to each other, and interact via <scene name='DNA/Dna_hydrogen_bond/2'>hydrogen bonds</scene> between complementary nucleotides (adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine).