How DNA finds its match
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 - 17:00
in Biology & Nature
This graphic shows DNA strung between two beads, which are held in position by laser. It's been more than 50 years since James Watson and Francis Crick showed that DNA is a double helix of two strands that complement each other. But how does a short piece of DNA find its match, out of the millions of 'letters' in even a small genome? New work by researchers at the University of California, Davis, handling and observing single molecules of DNA, shows how it's done. The results are published online Feb. 8 by the journal Nature.