DNA: Difference between revisions

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Each of the cells in your body carries about 1.5 gigabytes of genetic information, 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

== Read-Only Memory ==

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We often think of DNA as a perfect, smooth double helix. In reality, DNA has a lot of local structure. The small piece of DNA shown here, <scene name='DNA/1bna/7'>1bna</scene>, shows some of the common variations. At the top, the helix is bent to the left, distorted by the way that the helices are packed into the crystal. At the bottom, two of the bases are strongly propeller twisted--they are not in one perfect plane. This improves the way that the bases stack on top of one another along each strand, stabilizing the whole double helix. As more and more structures of DNA are studied, it is becoming clear that DNA is a dynamic molecule, quite flexible on its own, which is bent, kinked, knotted and unknotted, unwound and rewound by the proteins that interact with it.

==Additional Information==

# [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA DNA in Wikipedia]

== Acknowledgements ==

*Content adapted with permission from David S. Goodsell's [http://mgl.scripps.edu/people/goodsell/pdb/pdb23/pdb23_1.html Molecule of the Month on DNA]

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 <applet load="1bna" size="320" frame="true" align="right" />
-Each of the cells in your body carries about 1.5 gigabytes of genetic information, 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
 == Read-Only Memory ==
@@ Line 31: / Line 34: @@
 We often think of DNA as a perfect, smooth double helix. In reality, DNA has a lot of local structure. The small piece of DNA shown here, <scene name='DNA/1bna/7'>1bna</scene>, shows some of the common variations. At the top, the helix is bent to the left, distorted by the way that the helices are packed into the crystal. At the bottom, two of the bases are strongly propeller twisted--they are not in one perfect plane. This improves the way that the bases stack on top of one another along each strand, stabilizing the whole double helix. As more and more structures of DNA are studied, it is becoming clear that DNA is a dynamic molecule, quite flexible on its own, which is bent, kinked, knotted and unknotted, unwound and rewound by the proteins that interact with it.
+==Additional Information==
+# [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA DNA in Wikipedia]
 == Acknowledgements ==
 *Content adapted with permission from David S. Goodsell's [http://mgl.scripps.edu/people/goodsell/pdb/pdb23/pdb23_1.html Molecule of the Month on DNA]