JCAOligoTutorialDNA: Difference between revisions
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JCAnderson (talk | contribs) (New page: ==What is this DNA stuff?== If you've never heard of DNA, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dna and maybe pick up a textbook for the basics. The critical things you should understan...) |
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Revision as of 22:44, 14 April 2008
What is this DNA stuff?
If you've never heard of DNA, first read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dna and maybe pick up a textbook for the basics.
The critical things you should understand:
- DNA is made of 4 bases in a specific sequence (A, T, C, and G) controlled by covalent bonds
- DNA molecules have directionality, one end is the 5' terminus, the other end is the 3' terminus
- By convention, DNA sequences are always written out in the 5' to 3' direction unless stated explicitly with "5'-" and "3'-" or alternatively drawing the sequence as a line with a barb at one end. The barb refers to the 3' end.
- DNA can be circular or linear
- DNA can be single stranded or double standed
- Double standed DNAs anneal to each other by Watson-Crick base pairing
- The sequence of the complementary strand of a double standed DNA is the "reverse-complement" of the other strand
- The "reverse" and "complement" operations on a DNA sequence do not result in biochemically-meaningful molecules. You must always do both to get the sequence of the complementary strand
- With some exceptions, bacterially replicating DNAs are double stranded circular molecules regardless of whether they are genomic DNAs or plasmid DNAs.
- Even when DNAs are circular double stranded molecules, we represent them as linear single-stranded sequences using our software tools like ApE