Explain the importance of purines and pyrimidines with regard to DNA structure?

Explain the importance of purines and pyrimidines with regard to DNA structure?

Sarah K
Purines: Adenine, Guanine
Pyrimidines: Cytosine, Uracil, Thymine

Purines are the larger nitrogenous bases, they consist of two nitrogenous rings whereas pyrimidines only have one.

Purines pair with pyrimidines (A-T, G-U [RNA], G-T [DNA])

sweety
purines and pyramidines r nitrogen bases which helps in holding two strands of the DNA giving the str. of double stranded helix DNA by hydrogen binding between the purine and pyramidine bases

Clare
Remeber: All Girls are Pure

so A and G are purines (single ring)
and T and C are pyrimidines (double ring)

A and T always base pair and C and G always base pair.

The significance is that the width of the DNA strand will always be constant. It will also create a major and minor groove on the DNA. The large groove allows enzymes to scan the bases within the DNA and decide were to start replication etc...

Hope this helps :-)

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