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What is DNA and what is it made of?

In this video, Dr Marta Gabryelska and her son Eryk talk about DNA, what it is made of, how cells make more DNA, and how DNA can be destroyed. They will also eat some skittles. Why skittles? You need to watch the video to find out!

What is DNA and what it is made of? Hello, everyone, my name is Dr. Marta Gabryelska. And today with my assistant, Eric, we will be talking about DNA, and what DNA is made of. Yeah! And to help us understand that we have some teaching aids, which is sour Skittles, because we like sour Skittles. And what you need to know is that DNA is also have a long name, which is called deoxyribonucleic acid, which has this acid with and it means it’s sour. Everything that conveys acid is sour, therefore, so these skittles will help us understand what DNA is made of. So what is DNA? DNA carries information about our bodies, it is in every cell of our body. And these, these pieces of information are called Genes, but not the jeans as a trousers you are wearing, but the genes in our cells that carries the information. And this information is for example, about how tall Will you grow. Or what colour are your eyes. And DNA is built off little bases called adenine. We call it a
one called G.
Cytsine called C and Thymine called T. Okay, and we will be building our DNA from Skittles.
Yeah, In DNA, there are four types of Skittles. Skittles G, like green. Skittles, C, like citrus. So yellow, Skittle A, which is like red apple, and Skittle T, which will be orange. Okay, and DNA. Make really friends between these Skittles. So G is a best friend of C. And a is A best friend of T. and DNA is made of two strands that Eric won’t just draw. And when they make friends, it looks like a ladder. Another one. Yeah. So in DNA, you will always know what is your best friend. And number one, okay. So I will put order of Skittles on one strand. So we have G
T,
C.
A,
that’s T
for this yellow.
Okay, and let’s add another G at the end. Okay, so now Eric, looking at this, can you guess what will be the best friend of these Skittles?
Yeah. Perfect. So now can you find the skills of a proper colour? So they will be in a proper place? C will be yellow.
Yeah. G is green. And we have one A and one G. Yeah. So we made a little piece of DNA. And to make more DNA, what DNA can do is it can split the strands and have two strands separately, which we’ll do it just in a moment. So our little piece of DNA is made of two strands and when the cell wants to make more DNA, it needs to divide it. And because it always knows who is best friend with who it will be easier for any DNA strands to build his best friend strand. So to help us, I will draw some part of our strands 12345 and this 12345. So we can now put things in order.
So even a colour blind person, could understand the two sides and invert them.
Yeah and you are very right
A colour blind person can see this graph to know how to invert these letters.
Yes. Fantastic. Can you write them here to the proper letters?
Yeah.
Thank you.
So the next one will be g, t, c, a, and g again? Yep. And as lowercase a lowercase g.
Yeah. So you can see from one piece of DNA, we have two pieces of DNA now. How cool is that? Right? Yeah. So I hope you now know how DNA is what DNA is built of. And what you can also know is that there are little things in our cells that sometimes can eat DNA. And these are called DNase’s. And today, right now we are two DNase’s, eating DNA. Yeah. Which one is your favourites skittle?
I like G.
I like C
C?,
yeah, yeah. Um, so let’s check. What did you learn about DNA today? DNA is similar. It is an acid. It is made of two strands that look a bit like a ladder. And these strands are best friends. They really like to stick together. G always pairs with C, and A always pairs with T. That’s a rule. And there are little things called DNases that eat DNA. Thanks for watching.
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