What Does DNA Stand For – Full Meaning and Founder

What Does DNA Stand For – Full Meaning and Founder

Do you know what DNA stand,  what DNA is really all about and how it affects your personality?

This post will reveal to you what DNA stand for, what it does, and how it was discovered.

DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid.

ie DNA: DeoxyriboNucleic Acid

It is the genetic information that every parent passes on to their biological children.

DNA plays a role in physical features (height, and eye color), in disease (multiple sclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease), and even behavioral traits (risk-taking).

This acid is one of two main nucleic acid, the other being ribonucleic acid (RNA).

DNA and RNA, proteins, lipids and complex carbohydrates (polysaccharides), are known as macromolecules and are collectively essential for all known forms of life.

Most DNA molecules consist of two biopolymer strands coiled around each other to form a double helix.

The sequence that runs along this double helix makes up our genetic information.

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How was DNA Discovered?

The molecule now known as DNA was first identified in 1869 by a Swiss chemist called Johann Friedrich Miescher.

Johann set out to research the key components of white blood cells, part of our body’s immune system.

The main source of these cells was pus-coated bandages collected from a nearby medical clinic.

Johann called this mysterious substance ‘nuclein’.

In 1881 Albrecht Kossel, a German biochemist, identified nuclein as a nucleic acid and provided its present chemical name, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).

He also isolated the five nucleotide bases that are the building blocks of DNA and RNA: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), thymine (T) and uracil (U).

This work was rewarded in 1910 when he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Walther Flemming, an anatomist from Germany, discovered a fibrous structure within the nucleus of cells.

He named this structure ‘chromatin’, which is what we now know as chromosomes.

Things soon snowballed, and DNA’s role in heredity was confirmed in 1952.

Then in 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson came across the DNA double-helix model, before claiming they’d ‘discovered the secret to life’.

These discoveries laid the foundations of modern DNA studies, and led science on to The Human Genome Project that ran from 1990 to 2003, the world’s largest collaborative biological project.

The scientists working on it discovered and confirmed the sequence of nucleotide base pairs that make up human DNA.

They also discovered and related back how each element of the human genome manifests, from a physical and a functional standpoint.