Molecular foundations of heredity – basic principles
How it works
The molecular foundations of heredity describe how genetic information is stored, passed on and used in the form of DNA. DNA consists of the four bases adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine and is built as a double helix from two antiparallel strands. Genes are sections of DNA that contain the information for a functional RNA molecule or, in most cases, for a protein, and thus influence traits. During replication, the DNA is duplicated before cell division. Protein biosynthesis takes place in two steps: during transcription, the information of a gene is rewritten into mRNA; during translation, the base sequence of the mRNA is translated at the ribosome into the amino acid sequence of a protein. Mutations are changes in the DNA sequence that can alter the function of gene products.
Genetic information is stored in the DNA and, during protein biosynthesis, is converted into the amino acid sequence of a protein by transcription and translation; base pairing follows fixed rules (A-T, G-C).
An example
Which bases are paired with each other complementarily in DNA?
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50 Exercises
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