DNA Discovery

In this activity we made DNA strands out of candies and toothpicks. Each candy represented something that makes a DNA strand. Red jolly ranchers and orange gummy bears went together and green jolly ranchers and red gummy bears went together. Once we built up the DNA strand, we broke the toothpicks in half and then replicated the strands. This whole process is shown in the photos below.

From this activity I learned that there can be up to 3000 proteins in a gene. As for the structure of DNA: A=T and C=G. Those are the only patterns that the bases can be in, so a T couldn't be with a C or an A couldn't be with a G. The DNA strand is in a double helix shape. When the DNA replicates, it is done in a semi-conservative way. This means that half of the DNA is kept the same during replication.

In the 1950's, Watson and Crick were studying the structure of DNA. They used data from Franklin and Wilkins. Franklin took the original picture of the DNA structure and then Wilkins showed Watson and Crick the picture.