DNA

Taken By Thomas Leung Block F May 24

__**DNA**__
What is DNA? DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid, a substance found in all living organisms that holds the so called blue prints for all features of that organism. Due to the shear length of DNA I cannot show you a picture of DNA, however I can show you pictures of segments. The DNA segments responsible for this are called genes, other DNA sequences have structural purposes or are responsible for the management of he genetic information.

__Chemical Properties__
DNA's structure is composed of two long polymers or nucleotides and backbones of sugar and phosphate. These two strands run opposite to each other, each sugar in the strand has a base connected to it. These bases are either Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine or Thymine. The DNA bases pair up with each other A with T and G with C. It is the sequence of these four bases along the backbone that encodes information.



__How it is made__
DNA is produced naturally in living organisms. When a cell divides in half, it enters a proverbial production line. As it enters the DNA Double helix is unwound into two strands by an enzyme called Helicase. One strand is compied continuously, however the other strand is not so simple. The first strand is formed with DNA polymer 3 from it's 5' to 3'. The other strand must also form from it's 5 prime to it's 3 prime, however instead of using DNA polymer 3 right away it uses a RNA primase first to lay down a RNA primer. Then DNA polymer 3 comes to lays down DNA, later DNA polymer 1 comes to replace the RNA primer with DNA which then comes to the final step which has DNA ligase fuse the fragments together.

Here is a link that should take you to a good picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DNA_replication_en.svg

For further knowledge about DNA Replication http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jtmOZaIvS0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teV62zrm2P0

__Effects Upon Human Beings__
Our DNA determines just about everything about us from the way we look to the things we do, there is even evidence that certain genetic traits can affect whether or not we will be successful or not. Though everyone in the world has different DNA, despite this though we share more than 98% of our DNA with each other. In fact we share 50% of our DNA with that of a banana. But back to the point, DNA controls everything. It determines what our possible strengths are, our allergies, what diseases we are prone to.

__**USES OF DNA**__
Our understanding of DNA has only just begun, however genetically altering other organisms has not started recently. For many years humans have breed animals in such a way that they become more suited to our needs, in fact pigs and cows have been breed in so that they produced larger and healthier offspring as early as 9000 BC. But with our current knowledge of DNA and its affects on living organisms, we can genetically modify many different things so they may be of even better use to humans. But genetic modifications are not just for our benefit, we also use it to help certain species of plants and animals that have a high risk of becoming extinct. One good example is the effort in producing a banana that has or can mutate its DNA, this is due to the fact that all commercial bananas are genetic duplicates.

__Fun DNA And Chemistry Stuff__
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1UPf7lXeO8 DNA Related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUA6_Ucw3i4&feature=related Watch!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmwlzwGMMwc&feature=related Watch!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUzTQWn-wfE&feature=related Watch!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY0LepL9QxE Mole Related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tilkl4lRqzo&feature=related

**__Bibliography__**
http://www.dnaftb.org/15/concept/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/basics/dna http://101science.com/dna.html