DNA Structure and Dynamics - Assignment Example

The phosphate groups form a phosphodiester bond between the 3rd and 5th adjacent sugar carbons. There are 4 nitrogen bases namely, Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine, and a nucleotide may have any one of the nitrogen bases. The sequence of these bases represents the genetic code that codes for all the proteins that a cell requires for its genetic expressions. The two ends of the strands are different as one ends with a phosphate attached to 5-C and the other has a hydroxyl group attached to 3-C.

The two strands of the DNA are antiparallel i.e. they face in opposite directions. Adenine pairs with Thymine while Cytosine pairs with Guanine only. The bases are linked to each other by weak hydrogen bonds which are broken during the replication process. In a DNA double helix, each base in one strand is bonded to its complementary base in the other strand according to the rule of adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine (Despopoulus and Silbernagl, 2003, p21). Thus, owing to this feature, one of the strands can be used as a complementary strand for the duplication of genetic material as the strand will encode the same genetic code as the original one. B. I.

The features of the DNA that make it apt for storing information include the grooves of the backbone structure, hydrogen bonding, and the presence of complementary bases. Since the DNA is a double-stranded, coiled structure the strand backbones are sometimes closer and sometimes far apart. When the strand backbone is far apart it is known as the major groove and when they are relatively nearer it is known as the minor groove. The presence of these grooves makes the DNA structure apt for storage since retrieval also becomes much easier.

These grooves play a major role during important processes like transcription, replication, etc. Proteins such as transcriptional factors can easily interact with the bases because the major groove provides enough space for the interaction and hydrogen bond donors and acceptors are much more distinct in the major groove/ Watson and Crick were the ones to see that the complementary nitrogenous bases were held together with the help of weak hydrogen bonding. Three hydrogen bonds bind G and C white two hydrogen bonds pair A and T.

Breaking of the hydrogen bonds is important during replication. This exposes the bases of one strand which serves as the template for the formation of a new strand with replicated genetic code (Mackenna and Callander, 1997, p33). However, the most important feature of the DNA that allows easy storage of information is the presence and arrangement of the complementary bases. Each nitrogenous base on one strand forms hydrogen bonds with a complementary base on the other strand in which adenine forms two hydrogen bonds with thymine and guanine forms three hydrogen bonds with cytosine and is important since it determines the dynamics of DNA-protein recognition (Yakushevich, 2011, p.2482). It is already known that the arrangement of these bases itself encodes information that can be easily replicated since both strands are complementary and hence carry the same information thus by using one strand as the template the information is easily retrievable.