DNA Structure, Base Pairing, Replication & Fingerprinting

What does DNA stand for?

Deoxyribonucleic acid

Who gets credit for discovering the structure of DNA?

James Watson & Crick

What is the shape of DNA?

Double Helix

What are the subunits (monomer) of DNA called?

Nucleotides

What are the three parts of a nucleotide?

Deoxyribose, phosphate, and nitrogenous base

What did Chargaff discover?

Adenine = Thymine & Guanine = Cytosine

What did the X-ray diffraction photos made by Wilkins and Franklin suggest?

Discovered sugar-phosphate backbone and was helical

A DNA molecule will always have the same number of…

Thymine and Adenine, as well as Guanine and Cytosine

What is a complementary base pair?

The pairing of purines (A-T & C-G)

What is the name of the 5-carbon sugar in a nucleotide?

Deoxyribose

What do you call the process in which DNA copies itself?

Replication

What does helicase do?

Breaks the hydrogen bonds

What does DNA polymerase do?

Duplicate the DNA strands / Polymerase

What enzyme can "proofread" DNA during replication?

Polymerase

What is the function of DNA?

To store hereditary info

What determines the traits of an organism?

Sequence of base pair

What type of bond holds the complementary base pairs together?

Hydrogen bonds

The goal of DNA replication is to make a copy of DNA and this occurs in the…

S phase of the cell cycle

The steps of DNA replication are:

DNA unwinds (unzipping), Adding of Nucleotides, Completion of DNA Strands

DNA has coding sections called… and non-coding sections called…

Exons and Introns

DNA coding sections and non-coding sections can be used for…

tissue matching or inheritance matching

What can DNA fingerprinting be used for?

Tissue matching or inheritance matching (to show sections unique to each organism)

Deletion and duplication are types of mutations that can get passed to the offspring if they occur in the…

Gametes