Dna Model Project

319 Words2 Pages
DNA Model Project Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is found in all living things and is a polymer made up of many monomers, or nucleotides. Nucleotides are made up of three parts: a phosphate group, a deoxyribose sugar molecule, and a nitrogen containing base molecule. These nitrogen containing base molecules could be either: adenine, thymine, cytosine, or guanine. Adenine pairs with thymine and cytosine with guanine. This way, DNA can write codes out of the nitrogen containing base molecule. These codes contain the message that tells the cell what to do. My model base pairs because the yellow pipe cleaners represent cytosine and the green, guanine; the red pipe cleaners and the blue show a base pair between adenine and thymine. The purple in my model is phosphate groups and the silver is deoxyribose sugars. When cells need to divide, the cells have to replicate and copy its entire DNA so that each daughter cell gets one complete set of genetic information. The hydrogen pairs that are holding together the base pairs are broken by enzymes, like helicase, and the molecule is split in half creating two strands. This process is also called the “unzipping process”. These two strands have to follow the rules of base pairing. Each strand serves as a template for the attachment of complementary bases. Then another molecule called DNA polymerase makes a new strand, using the code that matches each of the strands of the split DNA molecule and “proof-reads” each new DNA strand so that each new molecule is a perfect copy of the original DNA. When DNA makes a code it changes the sequence of the nitrogen bases into an RNA sequence. The only difference between DNA and RNA bases is that RNA has no thymine but instead has uracil. You would read the sequence three bases at a time. The codons represent the different amino acids which make a

More about Dna Model Project

Open Document