Basic genetics

You probably already heard about DNA, genes and chromosomes. But what are they all about?

DNA is a long molecule. It's a repetition of 4 bases: A, T, C and G. The order of the 4 bases is what contains the genetic information.

A piece of DNA:
...ATTCGAGCCCGATTA...

You probably already heard about the double helix structure of DNA. Basically it means that DNA is a double strand that is wound around each other. It's not just any two strands: opposite to a T there is A and opposite a C there is a G. So our piece of DNA becomes:
...ATTCGAGCCCGATTA...
...TAAGCTCGGGCTAAT...

So how does this all relate to genes? And how do genes relate to traits? Click here to find out.