DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid is double helical molecule, that is, it has two strands. These strands are complementary to each other and are connected to give DNA molecule, the double helical structure. Nucleotides are the monomers of these DNA (as well as RNA) molecules. Each nucleotide consists of either a purine or a pyrimidine base. In case of DNA molecule, the purine bases are adenine (denoted by A) and guanine (denoted by G), while the pyrimidine bases are thymine (denoted as T) and cytosine (denoted as C). Adenine always pairs up with thymine and guanine always pairs up with cytosine and that is how the nucleotides pair up. In other words, A with T and C with G.
Using this knowledge of nucleotide pairing or base pairing, one can determine the base pair sequence in the complementary strain of dna, given the base pair sequence of one strand.
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