Give Salient Features of Double-helix Structure of DNA! Please answer fast urgent.
Answers
Here is the Answer!
Major Salient Features are:
(i)DNA is a long polymer of deoxyribonucleotides. It is made up of two polynucleotide chains, where the backbone is constituted by sugar-phosphate and the bases project inside.
(ii)The two chains have anti-parallel polarity,
5′—-> 3′ for one, 3′– > 5′ for another.
(iii)The bases in two strands are paired through hydrogen bond (H—bonds) forming base pairs (bp). Adenine forms two hydrogen bonds with thymine from opposite strand and vice-versa. Guanine bonds with cytosine by three H—bonds. Due to this, purine always comes opposite to a pyrimidine. This forms a uniform distance between the two strands.
(iv)The two chains are coiled in a right-handed fashion. The pitch of the helix is 3.4 nm and there are roughly 10 bp in each turn. Due to this, the distance between a base pair in a helix is
about 0.34 nm.
(v)The plane of one base pair stacks over the other in double helix. This confers stability to the helical structure in addition to H—bonds.
Hope the answer helped you.
If you find it useful,
Do mark it as Brainliest.