DNA Structure

On Wednesday, January 31, 2007, Mrs. Rousseau's blue science class built the DNA structure out of toothpicks, gummy bears, chocolate and strawberry licorice, and string. We used green gummy bears to represent Guanine, yellow for Cytosine, orange for Thymine, and red for Adenine. The chocolate licorice represented Phosphate. We learned that Cytosine only goes with Guanine, and Adenine only goes with Thymine. During class, we also learned that the DNA structure is called a Double Helix. I learned from http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/VL/GG/structure.html that Adenine and thymine are connected by two hydrogen bonds and guanine and cytosine are connected by three. I also learned that there are 4 different bases in a DNA molecule: adenine (a purine), cytosine (a pyrimidine), guanine (a purine), and thymine (a pyrimidine). This piece of information was from http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/DNA_structure.html. I definitely think that this was such a great way to learn about the structure of DNA because since we used candy to build it, the class was definitely more interested. Also, I really enjoyed the hands-on activity and thought that we learned more by actually building the structure. To sum it up, I learned a lot from building the DNA structure and also had fun while doing it.