DNA Vocabulary Definitions
1. vaccine: a substance prepared from killed or weakened a
microorganism that is introduced into the body to produce immunity.
2. virulent: a disease causing organism
3. transformation: genetic modification
4. bacteriophage: a virus that infects bacteria
5. nucleotides: the subunits that make up DNA
6. deoxyribose: 5 carbon sugar
7. adenine: one of the four-nitrogen bases that is a purine.
8. guanine: one of the four-nitrogen bases that is a purine.
9. thymine: one of the four-nitrogen bases that is a pyrimidine
10.cytosine: one of the four-nitrogen bases that is a pyrimidine
11.purines: they have a double ring of carbon and nitrogen atoms- A, G
12.pyrimidines: they have a single ring of carbon and nitrogen atoms- T,
C
13.base-pairing rules: Chargaff’s rules that state the amount of adenine
equals the amount of thymine and the amount of guanine equals the
amount of cytosine
14.double helix: a “spiral staircase” of two strands of nucleotides twisting
around a central axis
15.complementary: the sequence of bases on one strand determines the
sequence of bases on the other strand
16.replication: the process of synthesizing a new strand of DNA
17.helicase: enzymes that catalyze the unwinding and separation of
double-stranded DNA or RNA during its replication
18.replication fork: the point at which the double helix separates
19.DNA polymerases: enzymes that move along each of the DNA
strands, adding nucleotides to the exposed bases according to the
base-pairing rules
20.introns: the noncoding sequences called intervening sequences
21.exons: the nucleotide segments that code for amino acids
22. transposons: genes that have the ability to move from one
chromosome location to another