2.6 Structure of DNA and RNA
Understandings:
• The nucleic acids DNA and RNA are polymers of nucleotides.
• DNA differs from RNA in the number of strands present, the base composition and the type of pentose.
• DNA is a double helix made of two antiparallel strands of nucleotides linked by hydrogen bonding between complementary base pairs.
Applications and skills:
• Application: Crick and Watson’s elucidation of the structure of DNA using model making.
• Skill: Drawing simple diagrams of the structure of single nucleotides of DNA and RNA, using circles, pentagons and rectangles to represent phosphates, pentoses and bases.
• The nucleic acids DNA and RNA are polymers of nucleotides.
• DNA differs from RNA in the number of strands present, the base composition and the type of pentose.
• DNA is a double helix made of two antiparallel strands of nucleotides linked by hydrogen bonding between complementary base pairs.
Applications and skills:
• Application: Crick and Watson’s elucidation of the structure of DNA using model making.
• Skill: Drawing simple diagrams of the structure of single nucleotides of DNA and RNA, using circles, pentagons and rectangles to represent phosphates, pentoses and bases.
Powerpoint from lesson
3.3.pptx | |
File Size: | 350 kb |
File Type: | pptx |
Online notes to print if you like - click here
|
|
The untold story of the woman who helped to make one of humanity’s greatest discoveries – DNA – but who was never given credit for doing so.
‘Our dark lady is leaving us next week.’ On 7 March 1953 Maurice Wilkins of King’s College, London, wrote to Francis Crick at the Cavendish laboratories in Cambridge to say that as soon as his obstructive female colleague was gone from King's, he, Crick, and James Watson, a young American working with Crick, could go full speed ahead with solving the structure of the DNA molecule that lies in every gene. Not long after, the pair whose names will be forever linked announced to the world that they had discovered the secret of life. But could Crick and Watson have done it without the ‘dark lady’? In two years at King’s, Franklin had made major contributions to the understanding of DNA. She established its existence in two forms, she worked out the position of the phosphorous atoms in its backbone. Most crucially, using X-ray techniques that may have contributed significantly to her later death from cancer at the tragically young age of thirty-seven, she had taken beautiful photographs of the patterns of DNA. Click here for the link |