
DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid is generally known as genetic material or genome which is most important thing to inherite for the next generations. Physically, DNA is made up by 2 single strands of polymere of nucleotides which called polynucleotide. Each nucleotide is made up by by 3 things, which are pentose or deoxyribose(sugar or monosaccharide), phosphate, and nitrogenous bases. The phosphate group is a link for polymerisation of nucleotide which bonded at 3rd carbon of first deoxyribose ring and link the second sugar ring at 5th carbon to form phosphodiestre bridge and water due to this reaction. So, the line of sugar is a backbone for the strand. In this case, both of the strands have same backbone but have different nitrogenous bases, which exists in purine-pyrimidine pair. Purine and pyrimidine are name group of nitrogenous bases, which are purine has 2 ring structure and pyrimidine has single ring structure. The main groug of nitrogenous bases are consist by Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine. Adenine and guanine are recognised by purine bases while thymine and cytosine are recognised by pyrimidine bases. Naturally, adenine always paired with thymine by double hydrogen bonds and cytosine is paired to guanine by triple hydrogen bonds due to the number of existance of electronegative groups at bases's ring. Unlike with RNA strand which has one different base group, which is thymine replaced or converted into uracil during RNA production especially. Otherwise, both strands are bonded in antiparallel which is the structure drawn by upward and downward direction of polymerisation of nucleotide. So, the strands are recognised by 5'(5 prime) and 3'(3 prime). Usually, 5' strand is recognised easily in ring structure drawing which is an oxygen(a functional group) in the ring is upward. In addition, the length of 10 units of nucleotides is 3.4 nm or 3.4 Angstrom. Before a production of a new cell, especially for mitosis and meiosis process are carried out, a replication of chromosome which is derived from DNA occured and the main characteristic DNA in this process is semiconservative. This characteristic was proved by Messelson and Stahl by using the comparison result between 2 isotopes, N14 and N15 which are used during the replication process. N15 is heavier than N14 and detected by radiotion detector.
