DNA
DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid) is the blueprint of our bodies.
Without it there wouldn’t be an “us”, and it determines to a large part how our bodies function.
DNA is constructed as a double helix, sort of like a twisted ladder. The building blocks of this ladder are called nucleotides, consisting of a phosphate and a sugar molecule (the namegiving deoxyribose) and one of four bases, cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A) and thymine (T).
The nucleotides pair up to form the opposite sides of each rung of the ladder, so that A always pairs with T and C always pairs with G. The sequence of nucleotides along the ladder is a code that specialized “factories” within our cells translate into which bodily components they should be making.
This project (EDU-ARCTIC) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 710240. The content of the website is the sole responsibility of the Consortium and it does not represent the opinion of the European Commission, and the Commission is not responsible for any use that might be made of information contained.