What is your DNA made of?

Answer 1

DNA is Deoxyribonucleic Acid.

It is basically 4 blobs which stick to each other to form a long chain of blobs. Each blob has a sugar in the centre (decoys ribose sugar), this sugar is a pentagon shape and has 5 corners. DNA has a phosphate attached to the sugar in one corner and a nucleotide attached to the sugar in the opposite corner. The nucleotide determines if its called A, T, G or C (there are only 4 possibilities).

The sequence of A,T,G and C down the long chain (about 3mtrs long in a human) determines different genes, one gene may be 12 nucleotides long, another may be four. Each gene is responsible for making your appearance (phenotype), there are 25000 genes in the human body divided (not equally) into 46 chromosomes.

But, because 23 chromosomes are from mum and 23 are from dad, there are only 23 paired chromosomes, each gene is therefore duplicated or shown twice, this is called a diploid cell. IN sex cells such as egg and sperm, there are no duplicates and there are 23 single chromosomes, this is called a haploid cell.

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