DNA chemical and physical properties
Answers
Chemical Properties
DNA has two kinds of grooves that play important roles in its functioning. Major and minor grooves are structures to allow for necessary proteins in your body to make contact with bases. You might wonder what makes it so important for proteins to attach to the bases. Some of these proteins are called transcription factors. While the word may well be a foreign one for those unfamiliar with DNA - which is most of the public - it is a key one. Transcription factors have numerous roles such as telling your cells how large they should become or suppressing tumour growth. They are also significant for cell development and communication. As such, these DNA grooves seen in the structure of DNA facilitate the binding of proteins like transcription factors, which then serves to keep the cellular processes occurring effectively within your body.
Physical Properties
In living organisms such as humans, DNA exists as a pair of molecules rather than a single molecule. These strands are entwined in the shape of a double helix and the helix is kept stable by hydrogen bonds, which can be found between the bases attached to the two strands. A long polymer, DNA is made up of smaller units called nucleotides. In turn, each nucleotide consists of a phosphate group, a sugar and a nitrogenous base. To get a sense of just how long a DNA polymer is, consider that just one human chromosome is several hundred million base pairs long.
Answer:
In living organisms such as humans, DNA exists as a pair of molecules rather than a single molecule. These strands are entwined in the shape of a double helix and the helix is kept stable by hydrogen bonds, which can be found between the bases attached to the two strands. A long polymer, DNA is made up of smaller units called nucleotides. In turn, each nucleotide consists of a phosphate group, a sugar and a nitrogenous base. To get a sense of just how long a DNA polymer is, consider that just one human chromosome is several hundred million base pairs long.
Base Pairing
Explanation: