What is DNA?

What is?

• The answer lies in a molecule called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which contains the biological instructions that make each species unique.
• DNA is the hereditary material in humans and other organisms.

Who discover it?

• DNA was first observed by a German biochemist named Frederich Miescher in 1869.
• It was not until 1953 that James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin figured out the structure of DNA

What do and where is founded?

• DNA contains the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive and reproduce.
• Each DNA sequence that contains instructions to make a protein is known as a gene.
• Most of the DNA is placed within the nucleus and is called nuclear DNA.

What is made of?

• DNA is made of three parts: a phosphate group, a sugar group and one of four types of nitrogen that are, adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C).
• These bases determines what biological instructions are contained in DNA.
• The complete DNA is made of 23 pairs of chromosomes.

Chromosomes

• Humans normally have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Twenty-two of these pairs, called autosomes, look the same in both males and females.
• The 23rd pair is called the sex chromosomes and differs between males and females.