- [Voiceover] As long as human beings have been around
I could imagine that they have noticed that
offspring tend to have traits in common
with the parent.
For example, someone might have told you,
"Hey, you walk kind of like your dad,"
or, "Your smile is kind of like your mom,"
or, "Your eyes are like one of your uncles
"or your grandparents."
And so there's always been this notion
of inherited traits.
But it wasn't until the 1800 that that started to be
studied in a more scientific way with Gregor Mendel
the father of genetics.
But even then, even Mendel
who was starting to understand the mechanisms
or he was trying to understand how inheritance happened,
then you even could start to breed
certain types of things.
Even he didn't know exactly
what was the molecular basis for inheritance.
And the answer to that question wasn't figured out
until fairly recent times,
until the mid 20th century.
Not until the structure of DNA
was established by Watson and Crick
and their work was based on the work of many others
especially folks like Rosalind Franklin
who essentially provided the bulk of the data
for Watson and Crick's work,
Maurice Wilkins and many, many, many other folks.
But it's really the structure of DNA
that made people say, "Hey, that looks like
"the molecule that's storing the information."
Just to be clear, DNA wasn't discovered in 1953.
DNA was discovered in the mid 1800s.
It was this kind of this molecule
that was inside of nuclei of cells.
And for some time people said,
"Maybe this could be a molecular basis of inheritance."
You could imagine what you would need
to be a molecular basis of inheritance.
It would have to be a molecule
or a series of molecules that could contain information,
that could be replicated,
that could be expressed in some way.
But it wasn't until 1953
wherein this double helix structure
of DNA was established.
The people said, "Hey, this looks like our molecule."
So first, let's just talk about the structure here
and then actually we'll talk about where this name, DNA,
deoxyribonucleic acid comes from.
And then we'll talk a little bit about
why this structure lends itself well
to something that stores information,
that can replicate its information
and that could express its information.
We might go in depth on the expression of information
in future videos.
So this structure right over here
and this is a visual depiction of a DNA molecule.
You can view this as kind of a twisted ladder.
It has these two, I guess you could say
sides of the ladder that are twister.
That is one side right over there
and then it is another side.
There is another side right over here.
And in between those two sides
or connecting those two sides of that twisted ladder
you have these rungs.
And these rungs are actually where
the information, the genetic information is
I guess you could say stored in some way.
Because these rungs it's a sequence of different bases.
And when I say bases, you're gonna say wait.
This says acid, why are you saying bases right over here?
Well, the word deoxyribonucleic acid
comes from the fact that this backbone
is made up of a combination of sugar and phosphate.
And the sugar that makes up the backbone
is deoxyribose.
So that's essentially the D in DNA.
And then the phosphate group is acidic
and that's now where you get the acid part of it.
And nucleic is, hey this was found
in nuclei of cells.
It is nucleic acid.
Deoxyribonucleic acid.
It is actually mildly acidic all in total
but for every acid it actually also has a base,
and those bases form the rung of the ladders.
And actually each rung is a pair of bases
and as I said, that's where the information
is actually stored.
Well what am I talking about?
Well let me talk about the four different bases
that make up the rungs of a DNA molecule.
So, you have adenine.
Adenine.
And so for example, this part right over here.
This section of that rung might be adenine.
Maybe this right over here is adenine.
This right over here.
Remember, each of these rungs are made up by
it's a pair of bases.
And that might be adenine.
Maybe this is adenine
and I could stop there,
I mean I'll do a little more adenine.
Maybe that's adenine right over there.
And adenine always pairs with the base thymine.
So let me write that down.
So adenine pairs with thymine.
Thymine.
So, if that's an adenine there
then this is going to be a thymine.
If this is an adenine
then this is going to be a thymine.
Or if I drew the thymine first,
well say, okay it's gonna pair with the adenine.
So this is going to be a thymine right over here.
This is going to be a thymine.
If I were to draw this,
this would be a thymine right over here.
Now the other two bases,
you have cytosine which pairs with guanine
or guanine that pairs with cytosine.
So guanine and we're not gonna go into
the molecular structure of these bases just yet,
although these are good names to know
because they show up a lot
and they really form kind of the code,
your genetic code.
Guanine.
Guanine pairs with cytosine.
Guanine and cytosine.
Cytosine.
So actually if this is,
let's say there's some cytosine there,
let's say cytosine right over here.
Maybe this is a cytosine, maybe this is cytosine,
maybe this is cytosine, this is cytosine
and maybe this is cytosine.
Then it always pairs with the guanine.
So, let's see, this is guanine then
and this will be guanine.
This is guanine, this is guanine.
I actually didn't draw stuff here.
This is guanine, I didn't say what these could be
but these would be maybe the pairs of
they could be adenine-thymine pairs
and it could be adenine on either side
or the thymine on either side,
and they could be made of guanine-cytosine pairs
where the guanine or the cytosine is on the other side.
Actually just to make it a little bit more complete
let me just color in the rungs here as best as I can.
So those are guanines
so they're gonna pair with cytosine.
Pair with cytosine, pair with cytosine.
When you straw in this way
you might start to see how this is essentially a code,
the order of which the bases are...
I guess the order in which we have these
or the sequence of these bases essentially in code
the information that make you, you,
and you could be.
Well how much of it is nature versus nurture
and when people say nature, you know,
it's literally genetic,
and that's an ongoing debate, an ongoing debate
but it does code for things like your hair color.
When you see that your smile
is similar to your parents
it is because that information to a large degree
is encoded genetically.
It affects a lot of what makes you you
and actually not even just within a species
but also across species.
Humans have more genetic material
in common with other humans
than they do with say a plant.
But all living creatures as we know them
have genetic information.
This is the basis by which they are
passing down their actual traits.
Now you might be saying
well, how much genetic information
does a human being have?
And the number will either disappoint you
or you might find it mind-boggling.
The human genome and every species
has a different number of base pairs
to large degree correlated with how complex they are
although not always.
But the human genome has 6,000,000.
Sorry, not 6,000,000, 6,000,000,000.
6,000,000 would be disappointing,
even billion might be disappointing.
6,000,000,000 base pairs.
6,000,000,000.
6,000,000,000 base pairs.
And when you have your full complement of chromosomes
and this is in most of the cells in your body
and outside of your sex cells,
the sperm or the egg cells.
This is going to be spread over 46 chromosomes.
46 chromosomes or I guess you could say
23 pair of chromosomes.
If you divide 6,000,000,000 by 46
you get a little over on average 100,000,000.
I think it's a 100 and something million
base pairs per chromosome.
And some chromosomes are longer,
actually the longest are over 200,000,000
and some might be shorter.
That's just on average.
Now this number might to some of you might be exciting.
You're like, "I thought I was a simple creature.
"I didn't know I was this complex."
6,000,000,000, that's a lot of base pairs.
That feels like a lot of information.
For others of you it might not feel so great.
You might say, "Hey, wait I could store
"this much information on a modern thumb drive
"or on a hard disk.
"I thought I was more unique than that."
And of course we all are special and unique.
You're gonna say 6,000,000,000 base pairs.
I thought I was, you know,
I was infinitely complex and whatever else.
There's some arguments for that
along some other directions,
but this is the approximate length I guess you could say
or the approximate size of the actual human genome.
And when we talk about chromosomes
and we'll talk about chromosomes in much more depth,
imagine taking this zoomed in thing
that you have right over here
and you know, over here, I don't know how many we have,
Like one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, 10,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.
We have about 20 base pairs depicted here.
Imagine if you had about 200,000,000 of these base pairs
and then you were to take this thing
and you were to kind of coil it up
into that thing is a chromosome.
It is a chromosome and you're saying, "Wait,
"I have that much information in
"most of the cells of my body.
"This thing must be incredible compact."
And if you said that I would say,
"Yes, you are correct."
This, the radius, the radius of the DNA molecule
is on the order of one nanometer.
One nanometer which is a billionth of a meter.
So you can start to assess
kind of the scale of this thing.
This is a very dense way
to actually store information.
But just to have an appreciation of
and you might have seen it when I was coloring in
on why the structure lends itself
to being able to replicate the information
or even to be able to translate or express the information.
Let's think about if you were to take this ladder
and you were to just kind of split all the base pairs.
So, you just have 1/2 of them.
So you essentially have half of the ladder.
And so if you only have half of the ladder,
you're able to construct the other half of the ladder.
Let's take an example, let's say
and I'll just use the first letter to abbreviate
for each of these bases.
Let's say you have some...
So let's say this is one of the,
this is the sugar phosphate backbone right over here.
So this could be one of the sides.
Let's say there's some adenine.
Actually we do in the right color.
So you got some adenine, adenine.
Maybe some adenine right over here
and maybe there's an adenine there.
And maybe you have some thymine, thymine,
maybe thymine right over here
and then you have some guanine,
guanine, guanine.
And then let's say you have some cytosine
and you have some cytosine.
So with just half of this ladder I guess you could say,
you're able to construct the other half,
and this is actually how DNA replicates.
This ladder splits and then each of those
two halves of that ladder
are able to construct versions of the other half,
or versions of the other half
are able to constructed on top of that,
on top of that half.
So how does that happen?
Well, it's based on how these bases pair.
Adenine always pairs with thymine
if we're talking about DNA.
So if you have an A there,
you're gonna have a T on this end, T on this end.
T's right all over here, T right over there.
If you have a T on that end
you're gonna have an A right over there.
A, A.
If you have a G, a guanine on this side,
you're gonna have a cytosine on the other side.
Cytosine, cytosine, cytosine.
And if you have a cytosine
you're gonna have a guanine on the other side.
Hopefully that gives you an appreciation
of how DNA can replicate itself.
And as we'll see also how this information can be
translated to other forms of either related molecules
but eventually to proteins.
And just to kind of round out this video,
to get a real visual sense
what the DNA molecule looks like
or I guess a different visual depiction from this.
I found this animated gif
that, you know, if you haven't fully digested
what a double helix looks like, this is it.
And you see here, you see your
sugar phosphate bases here.
You see kind of the sugars and phosphate,
the sugars and the phosphates
alternating along this backbone,
and then the rungs of the ladder are these base pairs.
So this is one of the bases,
that's the corresponding,
that's this corresponding, I guess you can say partner.
And you can see that along all the way up and down
in this molecule.
Very exciting.