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Eating DNA

Today I made a replica of some good old deoxyribonucleic acid.

Mmm. More commonly known as DNA,  it is hidden in tiny, long structures called chromosomes. During cell division these chromosomes are duplicated in the process of DNA replication, providing each cell its own complete set of chromosomes. It grows something like this: One cell makes two, two makes four, four makes eight, etc. 

 I first chose a sequence, and then placed adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine in that order. Those are just four types of nucleobases (aka, bases).These four nucleobases, along the backbone, encode biological information, like your eye color or your hair color. Marshmallows were my base pairs, and a Twizzler was the backbone. The backbone is made up of a residue of chemical sugars.

Yum! Cytosine!

Labelling my base pairs. 

                            Adenine always pairs with thymine, and cytosine with guanine.

Twisting it into a double helix.