Genomics is the study of all of a person's genes (their genome), including the interactions of those genes and how they react with each other, and an organism's environment.
What is DNA?
We've touched on DNA before! It's deoxyribonucleic acid - a chemical compound that contains all the instructions needed to develop and direct activities of nearly all living organisms.
- DNA molecules are made of two twisting, paired strands.
- This is often referred to as a double helix.
- Each DNA strand is made of four chemical units, called nucleotide bases
- These comprise what's known as the genetic 'alphabet'
- The bases for DNA are:
- adenine (A)
- thymine (T)
- guanine (C)
- guanine (G)
- Bases on opposite strands pair very specifically to their 'complementary bases':
- A always pairs with T
- C always pairs with G
- The order of the As, Ts, Cs and Gs determine the meaning of the information encoded in that part of the DNA molecule.
- It's similar to how the order of letters determine the meaning of a word.