Building Blocks
The three components of every nucleotide
What are a phosphate group, a pentose sugar, and a nitrogenous base?
The shape Watson and Crick described DNA's structure as
What is a double helix?
The two purine bases
What are adenine and guanine?
The scientist whose rule states %A = %T and %G = %C in DNA
Who is Chargaff?
The base found in RNA but not DNA
What is uracil?
The sugar found in DNA
What is deoxyribose?
The number of hydrogen bonds between an A–T pair
What is two?
The pyrimidine bases found in DNA
What are cytosine and thymine?
What Chargaff's rules hinted at, years before the double helix structure was known
What is complementary base pairing?
Whether RNA is typically single- or double-stranded
What is single-stranded?
The bond that links the sugar of one nucleotide to the phosphate of the next
What is a phosphodiester bond?
The number of hydrogen bonds between a G–C pair
What is three?
The number of rings in a purine's structure
What is two (a fused six- and five-membered ring)?
The organism Hershey and Chase used in their experiment
What is a bacteriophage?
The sugar found in RNA
What is ribose?
The carbon on the sugar to which the nitrogenous base attaches
The carbon on the sugar to which the nitrogenous base attaches
The term for DNA's two strands running in opposite directions (5′→3′ and 3′→5′)
What is antiparallel?
The number of rings in a pyrimidine's structure
What is one (a six-membered ring)?
The lab tool used to physically separate phage coats from bacterial cells
What is a blender (followed by a centrifuge)?
The main job of RNA, compared to DNA's role of storing genetic information
What is building proteins (translating genetic information)?
The repeating sugar-phosphate structure that forms the "sides" of a nucleic acid strand
What is the backbone?
Why a G–C-rich region of DNA has a higher melting point than an A–T-rich region
What is because it has more hydrogen bonds holding the strands together?
Why a purine always pairs with a pyrimidine, never purine-purine or pyrimidine-pyrimidine
What is because it keeps the double helix's width constant?
What the Hershey-Chase experiment proved
What is that DNA, not protein, is the genetic material?
The structural reason DNA is more chemically stable than RNA
What is the absence of a hydroxyl (OH) group on the 2′ carbon of deoxyribose?