ANSC 3121 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Rachel Dawes, Nucleoside Triphosphate, Phosphodiester Bond
Document Summary
Chapter 4: descent with modification: continuity and variation in the genome (from genetics. Genes, genomes, and evolution by philip meneely, rachel dawes hoang, iruka n. okeke, and. Individuals that are well adapted to their environment and have a higher level of fitness (that is, an increased rate of survival and reproduction) will be favored by natural selection. Base pairing drives template-directed synthesis of new strands of dna. Much less energy is needed to separate strands in a double helix than to disrupt the covalent bonds that keep the nucleotides strung together. As a result, if dna is heated to near boiling in vitro, the double helix falls apart, or denatures, into two single strands, but each strand and its nucleotide sequence remains intact and stable. Once the two strands are locally separated from each other, the nucleotides along the single-stranded dna can anneal to their complementary bases; this associated is stabilized by the formation of hydrogen bonds between them.
