Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Chemistry => Topic started by: Whitney on 07/02/2011 06:30:02

Title: Is DNA a molecule?
Post by: Whitney on 07/02/2011 06:30:02

Whitney asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Is DNA a molecule?

What do you think?

Title: Is DNA a molecule?
Post by: CliffordK on 07/02/2011 06:52:02

According to the Watson & Crick Theory (which we use today).
DNA would be a double stranded polymer molecule. 

However, technically it would be two molecules (one for each individual strand) with hydrogen bonds between them.

The subunits in the polymer are called Nucleotide or Bases with a phosphate-deoxyribose, backbone.
The four bases in DNA are: adenine ( A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T)

RNA uses the first 3 bases, but uses uracil (U) instead of thymine.