Deoxyribonucleic Acid, also known as DNA, is the hereditary material in all living organisms. It's what makes us the way we are, our biological information. It's made up of four nucleotides, thymine (T), adenine (A), guanine (G), and cytosine (C).
DNA has a double helix structure which unwinds, or unzips, to be able to be replicated. DNA doesn't unzip all at once, it separates in small sections. It's separated by an enzyme called DNA gyrase. The DNA gyrase is followed by a helicase, this enzyme unwinds the strands of DNA and proteins called single strand binding proteins help the DNA stay separate. DNA polymerase goes through and copies the strands of DNA. Sometimes, nucleotides aren't matched correctly which causes mutations in the DNA. These errors are usually caught by DNA repair enzymes, but sometimes the mistakes aren't noticed and they are no longer recognized as mistakes and are passed down through cellular generations.
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