Talk:DNA

Since it would appear that the main agonists in the prior arguments have left wikipedia (or got bored with this article) I have taken the liberty to remove the HTML comments in the article warning people to not edit the first two paragraphs. I've placed the particular versions into the article which we had an earlier vote on, but these should now be considered by all as open for editting. Stewart Adcock 22:18, 7 May 2004 (UTC) (If the edit wars start again, then I'll happily slap myself around the face)

Credit due to Franklin.

For the paragraph on credit due to Franklin, see Talk:Rosalind_Franklin.

DNA for Dummies

Given the fact that DNA and genetic manipulation in general is a hot topic these days, I propose a DNA for Dummies section in this article, explaining as much as possible of the topic in plain English, for the plain mortal. I know it sounds silly for you scientist types buzzing with controversies around this article, but us plain folk don't quite get the part with "two polynucleotide strands can associate through the hydrophobic effect" for instance, which is part of the "Overview" section in this article.

Here's what I managed to learn as a layman mildly interested in the topic, just to get you started with the level of understanding you should assume:

DNA is made of genes, and genes alone;
Genes are the organism's cookbook;
DNA contains genes similarly to binary sequences, in the following way: you can only pair A with T and C with G, no other "atoms" are available, and no other combination works (no need to use the improper term "atom" as I did, I was just trying to convey the Greek meaning of the word for you guys to understand what I mean);
The order does matter: A+T is not the same with T+A, just as C+G is not the same with G+C;
However, since there are just four possible combinations, only one element on a conventionally chosen side of the strand is enough to describe the sequence;
Replication is done not by some magic digital copy machine, but rather by splitting the strand in the middle via relatively trivial chemical reactions, and drowning it in a "gene soup" (yes, I know, faulty layman terms; again, this is why I write this, just to make you see the level of understanding for non-scientist types). Since each of the "atoms" can only combine with a single type of pair, each element in each half-pair will only stick to their predetermined match. This way, each half of the strand ends up as a replica of the original, mutations notwithstanding;
Mutations are simply chemical imperfections in this process: the chain is trimmed, split or other elements get stuck at the end of it; all other basic mutations can be described as combinations of these accidental "operations".

I'm sure that you can describe the whole process better and a lot more accurate than I did above, even in layman's terms, and that's why I didn't write that section myself, although I believe that my general grasp of the phenomenon is reasonably accurate. I think that we're trying to build an encyclopedia "by everyone, for everyone", therefore such a section shouldn't be out of place in this article.

Thank you at least for reading all the proposal! --Gutza 02:32, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, one fears that such a section would die the "death by a thousand cuts" that the rest of the article has...nonetheless, hoping you'll have good luck with it, but perhaps I can help you with a formulation that would be less likely to mislead by over-simplification.

Genes are the organism's cookbook;
DNA is made of genes, areas that regulate genes, and areas that either have no function, or a function we don't know;
DNA is organized as two complementary strands, head-to-toe, with bonds between them that can be "unzipped" like a zipper, separating the strands;
DNA is encoded with four interchangeable "building blocks", called "bases", which can be abbreviated A, T, C, and G; each base "pairs up" with only one other base: A+T, T+A, C+G and G+C; that is, an "A" on one strand of double-stranded DNA will "mate" properly only with a "T" on the other, complementary strand;
The order does matter: A+T is not the same with T+A, just as C+G is not the same with G+C;
However, since there are just four possible combinations, naming only one base on the conventionally chosen side of the strand is enough to describe the sequence;
The order of the bases along the length of the DNA is what it's all about, the sequence itself is the description for genes;
Replication is done not by some magical copy machine, but rather by splitting (unzipping) the double strand down the middle via relatively trivial chemical reactions, and recreating the "other half" of each new single strand by drowning each half in a "soup" made of the four bases. Since each of the "bases" can only combine with one other base, the base on the old strand dictates which base will be on the new strand. This way, each split half of the strand plus the bases it collects from the soup will ideally end up as a complete replica of the original, unless a mutation occurs;
Mutations are simply chemical imperfections in this process: a base is accidentally skipped, inserted, or incorrectly copied, or the chain is trimmed, or added to; all other basic mutations can be described as combinations of these accidental "operations".

I'm sure this can be improved on, or made clearer. But I'd avoid saying DNA consists only of genes in any case, because it's not true.- Nunh-huh 02:52, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarifications!

I would really hold on to something along the lines of my "drowning in a gene soup" in the replication part, if that is reasonably accurate, and obviously with rephrasing to convey the proper idea. I think that's a very good visual representation of the "magic" and beauty of the DNA replication process -- the fact that the process is so robust that it allows for reasonably accurate replication without very controlled conditions.

Apart from that, I think your version is extremely close to what I had in mind, thank you for the adjustments! I'll wait for revisions here for a couple of more days, and then I'll insert it in the article if nobody else beats me to it. By the way, do you think the section title "DNA for Dummies" would be out of line in this article? --Gutza 12:12, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I just realized that we miss the part where we explain the double-strand structure; unfortunately my terminology is so incomplete that I can't even start to explain that part without making a fool of myself. Can you please add another bullet point between the second and the third explaining this? A nucleotide is composed of three parts: 5-phosphate groups,

Thank you again! --Gutza 12:18, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There are no genes in "gene soup": genes are on the DNA. The "soup" as it were includes the four bases, but no genes. Genes are ordered sequences of bases, and a soup is by its very nature unordered. - Nunh-huh 20:35, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the structure bullet point! Regarding the gene soup, this is precisely why I think this section is needed: I was unable to make the clear-cut distinction between genes and bases until you made the point above. I reordered some of the points as to make more sense, included your explanation about the genes and explained the "soup" thing at the replication bullet point. The section "DNA for Dummies" is now complete as far as I am concerned, this is exactly the level of understanding and detail I was going for.

Please make any final corrections you feel are required, and tomorrow I'll copy it in the article. Thank you for the patience, I think the result is great - never saw such a great brief and comprehensive explanation of the topic when I was trying to understand it! :-) --Gutza 07:38, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree -- it would be more accurate to say that DNA is a long chain of "bases" (nucleotides). I like the analogy of dunking a strand in a "nucleotide soup" of all 4 kinds of bases.. --DavidCary 02:03, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Split off the history section

I think this came up a while ago. It was proposed at one point to split off the "The discovery of DNA and the double helix" section into its own article, so that it can be expanded. It is a facinating story, and I'm wondering if we're doing it justice bunched in with the "science" content. Any objections to moving forward with that? Any suggestions for a name of the new page before we do it? I'm partial to something simple like Discovery of DNA. It's a slight misnomer, since the interesting part is the discovery of the helical structure, but a simple title like that has its benefits. -- Netoholic @ 07:03, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea; go ahead and do it. I'm not so sure about the title though. Maybe something like Discovery of DNA structure? or, History of DNA research? Stewart Adcock 16:59, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Don't change comment

While I see nothing wrong with the DNA in brief section, I'm afraid I do object to the HTML comment as a matter of principle. Wikipedia is all about anyone being able to change anything they want. When we intimidate people into not making changes with scary comments, it obstructs that. Perhaps better would be a brief reminder that that section is an overview and a reference to a section of the talk page. We all want to preserve content we think is good, but content can always be made better, and if someone makes a bad change and you don't catch it, someone else probably will. Deco 03:19, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just a very, very late comment by the author of that (old-gone) notification. I wrote it out of fear of the "death by a thousand cuts", as Nunh-huh put it in a previous comment on this very page (at least it was the same page at the time of this writing, might've been archived in a different place by the time you read this.) Now that someone has removed that notification, it looks like my "warning" wasn't really called for, since the "in brief" section still stands, and still matches the original goal. Therefore I salute your pro-wiki attitude, Deco, and I'm mildly ashamed that I felt the need for that warning sign, in the Wikipedia context! :-) --Gutza 21:25, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Other natural information encodings?

Is anyone aware of any other naturally occurring examples of information being encoded and read? Is DNA known to be uniquely suitable for this task, or is it just accidental that the role of encoding information fell to DNA? -- RussAbbott

You might find a few other methods in epigenetic inheritance. Also, there are viruses whose genomes are encoded with RNA, but that might not be different enough from DNA to count for your purposes (PNA may also have once been used as a genetic matieral when life first began, but that's just hypothetical. See also Origin of life for some other discussion and possibilities). Prions appear to pass on information about their conformations without DNA being used in the process, but I suspect this might be getting near the fuzzy boundary between information transmission and something simpler like crystal growth. Bryan 08:38, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm really looking for other examples of naturally occurring digitally encoded information that is clearly separated from the medium in which it is encoded. RNA is too much like DNA to be a good example for me. -- RussAbbott

Coding, reading, and manufacturing is very much a life process. Bees make their wax combs according to some kind of innate pattern. It is not known whether there is a pattern for combs in the DNA, or in some intermediate structure that is itself produced on the basis of what is encoded in DNA, or whether the hexagonal form may simply the the form that tightly packed cylinders of wax would take, i.e., that the hexagonal shape is not based on an internal plan at all. It is known, however, that bees can be encouraged to make larger or smaller cells by supplying them with flat wax sheets onto which have been imprinted the shapes of the bottoms of cells. If the hexagonal forms imprinted on the wax sheets are smaller/larger, then the cells constructed on them will be smaller/larger. I doubt that there could be anything else on a molecular level -- unless somebody does something in nanotechnology like that. So the only thing you might find would be an animal that carries around a sample of something (a saw, for instance) and uses that sample as a pattern to make another copy. As far as I know, it is considered remarkable for non-humans to use slightly fabricated artifacts as tools. I can't think of any animal that uses a pattern to make something. The earliest instance of the human use of a pattern that I know about appears in the Book of Poetry (Shi Jing). One poem says, "[I] take an ax to go cut an ax handle. Can the pattern [I need] be far from hand?" Humans are part of nature, but I doubt this is really the kind of thing that you want. P0M 00:38, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Using a sample is not what I'm after anyway. I'm looking for information encoded and read digitally. --RussAbbott 02:29, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Uh, memory (as in human memory) is stored (human brain and also elsewhere) and read. →Raul654 02:49, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

Information is stored somewhere, and in some form(s), and this stored information we call memory. And it may get recalled (found) and read when it is needed. But it isn't at all clear that the storage process is done by a series of "on" and "off" states (such as are represented by 1s and 0s in binary numbers), or even 3, 4, ... or some other relatively small number of discernable states. Neurons grow and change their connections during the process of learning, but the information may be stored in some kind of an analog form. (I'm not pretending that I know how that would work any more than I am sure that I know how a binary representation of an elephant would look.) Some people think that long term memories are stored away as molecular configurations, codings analogous to DNA codings.

A related problem lies in our unclear knowledge of the nature of knowledge. Asserting that the mind creates images of things in the outside world, and that the mind knows the thing by looking at the image of the thing involves us in infinite regress or else in the idea of a little man who lives in our brain and "looks at" the images our brain creates to represent the outside things. But then the question becomes: How does the little man see and understand the images? Does he have a still smaller little man...

Understanding how single cells identify things on their own scale may be helpful to understanding knowledge and storage of knowledge. I am trusting my memory, so the following account may not be very accurate, but it may be sufficient to get an important idea across: An immune cell in the blood stream may be able to "dock" with a cowpox virus and/or with a smallpox virus. Once it has docked, the immune cell becomes functionally different than when it had a "key" in its "lock." In its new state it signals the body to make antibodies that will fight either cowpox or smallpox viruses. Note that there is not an image of the cowpox virus, but a negative image a "lock" into which the virus (or a significant part of it) will fit. A sucrose molecule will dock with (be recognized by) a sweetness detector, but so will several other molecules, some of which are useful as artificial sweetners. There doesn't seem to me to be a "digital" process going on here. One of the hallmarks of digital memory is that because, e.g., a point on a CD-ROM is either burned or not burned, one can get a very clear record of something and the record will not gradually fade away as will an old color photo. Nor will the image fuzz out to nothing as an analog image will be degraded by a process of copying and recopying. By using a technique called "cyclical redundancy checking" (CRC) it is even possible to check the digital record to see whether a point has gotten burned that was not burned when the record was originally created. So digital records tend to be less smooth. (There is no way of handling a record that really ought to be 1.5. You either write a 1 or you write a 0. It's the difference between a water-color painting and a half-tone screen image where there are colored dots scattered fairly densely over an otherwise colorless page.) But digital records can potentially be preserved forever. All you need to do is make back-up copies to double-check against and periodically copy your old and decaying CDs onto fresh new CDs, and then check them against each other point by point.

How organisms go from recognizing sugar, salt, etc. in the water they are swimming in to recognizing macro-scale entities visually (or in other ways) is very unclear to me. But some parts of the recognition process appear to have been preserved. Even whales will be identified as fish until the naive observer investigates more closely. Sheep and goats may be identified as "the same kind of animal" by the untutored observer. So on those grounds I'm doubtful about memory being a digital process. Memory has to be a record of an identification or series of identifications, or so it seems to me.

If memory and learning were digital processes, then each neural connection would either be a 1 or a 0. There would be no stronger connections and no weaker connections unless the relative strengths actually reflected the number of on and off connections involved to make a kind of aggregate connection. But I don't recall every having read of anyone asserting that neural connections are either "totally there" or "totally not there."

I take it that what you are looking for is a system of recording and reading that depends on a small number of "digits" -- u, v, w, z, for instance, that are ordered into a meaningful sequence so that, let's say, uuxuxvw would mean "hot body core" or something meaningful but simple like that. P0M 09:53, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Your last paragraph captures it. The immune system and other forms of key-and-lock recognition are not the same since they are more shape-based than digital. Perhaps one needs shapes to recognize each individual digit. (That's an interesting point.) But I'm looking for an example of what we would consider naturally occurring digital recording other than DNA/RNA. --RussAbbott 23:55, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The basic distinction you want to make is between forms of recording that are "digital" and forms that are analog. A vinyl phonograph recording is analog. The instantanious variations of air pressure are recorded as instantanious variations of height or width in the groove wall. If you examine the record microscopically you would not see the "stairstep" effect that one gets when one blows up a digital picture (called "aliasing"). Binary digital recordings always are a kind of square wave,i.e., there is either something on the thirteenth step of the ladder or there is not. You can't put half or a third of your weight on a ladder rung in a digital system. So you always "falsify" the data to some extent. If you want to go to a finer "grain" you swap the 100 step ladder for one with 200 rungs, and represent the 13.5 you couldn't get before with 27. In other words, you always deal integer math.

How one "reads" the digital record is probably not really relevant to your basic question. One can read a CD-ROM with a microscope if you have to. Somebody with small enough "fingers" could read it like a braille record if the intervening plastic could be removed so you could get your fingers into the pits.

The machinery needed to read DNA and to fabricate amino acids on that basis is fantastic. To have a competing system of digital recording, digital reading, and actions programmed on the aforesaid operations would be tantamount to a second form of life since such a "machine" could be augmented to fabricate instances of itself. That is one of the goals of nanotechnology that has at least been talked about. If we wanted to turn an asteroid rich in some valuable ore into neat bricks of the purified metal, one way to do it would presumably be to create nanocritters that would be able to reproduce themselves and would be able to disassemble the oxide of the metal into purified metal and "slag." But we don't know how to do that kind of thing yet. We are just beginning to operate at that size level, and many researchers are looking to world of biology for models of how to do these tasks.

One of the forerunners of an early standby of computer interfacing was the punch cards that were used by weaving mills to automatically control the production of complex woven patterns. That is at least of kind of model for the sort of digital data recording you seek. The specific material representations involved don't matter much. Whether it is an IBM punch card or a player piano roll, or a series of bottles and gaps between bottles on top of a wall somewhere, the presence vs. absence relationship can be translated into many forms. So what animal, other than man, arranges things to represent information? Humans who cannot count can keep track of the number of sheep in their flock by putting one stone into a pouch for every sheep let out of the fold in the morning and then checking to see whether, if one stone is removed from the pouch for every sheep that reenters the fold at night, there are any stones left over in the pouch. If there is a stone or two left over, that may mean that the sheep herder needs to go looking for the lost sheep. Do other animals do this kind of thing? Do other primates knot cords? Do elephants dig notches into trees to represent the number of offspring they have given birth to? The closest kind of representation like that lies in the non-linguistic parts of at least some animals. It turns out that crows have better memories than humans. If I recall correctly, if 3 men enter a blind and 2 emerge, the crows are not deceived. Even if 7 enter and 6 emerge, the crow still knows that there is a hunter down there waiting to get him/her. So if you want to fool a crow you have to exceed the buffer capacity of the crow's mind. The memory buffer in the crow's mind/brain is stuffed full at 7. Anything over that just spills over the top. Humans' buffers are generally limited to 5.

If I recall correctly, there has been some work done with the memory buffers of honeybees. I'm not sure that a chemical/mechanical/electrical basis for the storage has been identified, but it appears that bees have a relatively small number of individual memory buffers. Bees need to be able to remember things like "compass direction" (actually a measurement based on orienting to direction by observing the polarization of sunlight). Bees are known to report on the presence of nectar and to report on the presence of pollen, so it is likely that there are memory buffers (maybe just yes and no entries) for "nectar?" and "pollen?". I probably read about this stuff in an article in Scientific American ten or twenty years ago. Is that the kind of thing you want?

Any use of symbolic representations by non-humans would be considered a major find, so if there are ants keeping track of the number of ant cows they have by biting gashes in blades of grass or something like that then that fact will get intense attention when it is discovered.

A systematic way of investigating this matter would be to ask whether there are non-DNA molecular codes, whether there are digital records kept by single-celled creatures somehow, whether multi-celled creatures (rotifers, for instance) scratch marks or collect markers, etc., etc. If I had to start looking at one point I think I would ask whether birds ever collect stones to represent, e.g., the number of eggs they have laid. (Useful if you think a cowbird might have managed to sneak something into your nest.)

It would be interesting to know whether crows remember "7 predators" by writing "1111111" in their predator buffers, or whether they write "111", or, I guess they could just write "7" (in whatever language crows count in). P0M 06:54, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I just remembered: Prairie dogs can identify individual predators, and they communicate such information by a kind of prairie dog language. If they can call out "three wolves" then you've got your digital representation. Then the next interesting question would be how the information is actually stored in their minds/brains... P0M 07:02, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Verbless sentence

"Avery the medium of transfer of traits as the transforming principle; his identified DNA as the transforming principle, and not protein as previously thought."

Huh? Sentences without verbs cause of confusion for me. — Ливай | ☺ 14:33, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

DNA au Francais

The people at fr have an interesting approach to the organziation of the diaspora of DNA articles and pages. The page in question is at fr: DNA, mRNA, and many others I suppose. It's a big box with the research structure of DNA science organized into all the possible pages. It certainly gets an A for Wikification. It is so easy to use.--McDogm 16:13, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Hash? What has become of this article?

It has been a while since I've looked at this article. It used to make sense to me. Now just looking at it gives me a headache. I see about 50 separate sections each consisting of 3 or 4 lines. I suppose I will have to spend hours with the history of the article to see how it has evolved (?) to its current state, but do others really think this is a desirable configuration? P0M 06:13, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you. Gene Nygaard 10:22, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

the name "deoxyribose nucleic acid" vs. "deoxyribonucleic acid"

The article currently inconsistently sometimes uses "deoxyribose nucleic acid" and other times uses "deoxyribonucleic acid". Should the article explicitly mention why one name is preferred over the other ? --DavidCary 02:03, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, if that's the case. But is one preferred over the other? I certainly always use the full term (currently the page title), which I thought this was more common and has always been used in the intro to the page. But according to googlefight deoxyribionucleic acid is more commonly used by quite a large margin [1] (http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=deoxyribose+nucleic+acid&word2=deoxyribonucleic+acid). It's Wikipedia policy to use consistant spelling, so we need to pick one or the other and standardise the spelling (but still mention alternative spellings). But in the light of the googlefight result I have no idea what to go for. Is there an official body (I asume IUPAC is not relevant to biochemistry) that has set a standard? For now we could, wherever possible, use the abbreviation. Joe D (t) 02:31, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I checked the genetics and mol bio section of Wikipedia:Library/Science#Biology and found the shorter version to be more common there, too. Joe D (t) 20:27, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

DNA is an abbreviation for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Deoxyribonucleic Acid should point, but to abbreviate this would be DA, not DNA. In any case, I think the abbreviation should point to the full term, and not vice-versa. Whig 05:45, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

However you spell it, there is absolutely no dispute that DNA is its abbreviation. Tufflaw 03:32, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Page Move

I don't really think that the page move is necessary? What are other peoples opinions?--nixie 05:51, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

No, and if the requestor doesn't step forward soon, I'm going to remove the listing. →Raul654 06:10, May 23, 2005 (UTC)
- I didn't nominate it, but I think the move would conform to Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Prefer_spelled-out_phrases_to_acronyms, what's your reasoning? --Dmcdevit 08:31, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
  - I think it should stay since joe public is going to have heard of DNA, but probably not deoxy...... There are several pages that are titled as acronyms that are in a similar situation, H.D. comes to mind, the rule is more so interpreted as use the most common name --nixie 08:54, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
    - It's more than just the common name though, IMHO. H.D. was her "official" name really, as it was how her work was attributed, similar to how the NAACP and the SAT have articles under those names because their respective organizations have officially declared those letters their official names. Whereas the ACLU and the TVA are placed at their spelled out name despite being commonly known by their acronyms. I probably could have thought of better examples, but I think these are good illustrations. Besides, it's not as if there wouldn't be a redirect. --Dmcdevit 09:28, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
      - I express no opinion on "DNA" versus a correctly spelled-out name, but, to avert any possible mixup, I note that the requested move is to the misspelling Deoxyribionucleic acid (superfluous i after the b). JamesMLane 10:18, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
    - Quoting the full text of the convention: Avoid the use of acronyms in page naming unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its acronym and is widely known and used in that form (NASA, SETI, and radar are good examples). The page should be called DNA with redirects from the full name (and that misspelling). Proto 11:18, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
      - I agree completely - the average person looking up this subject in an encyclopedia will look for DNA (I would suggest most often to find out what the acronym actually stands for). It is popularly known by its initials and should remain. Tufflaw 13:11, May 23, 2005 (UTC)
        I think I'd prefer the article to stay at DNA. However, if the page does end up being moved, then DNA should redirect there; it should not be a disambiguation page. Also, should it be moved, the new title should be Deoxyribonucleic acid (no capitalization of "acid". — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:00, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
        Incidentally, the article begins saying, "Deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid..." I've always seen it as "deoxyribonucleic acid", not "deoxyribose nucleic acid". All modern biology textbooks, medical textbooks, and journals that I can think of use the former, at least in the United States. Merriam-Webster also lists "deoxyribonucleic acid (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=dna&x=0&y=0)". Is there any source that uses the three-word version? Otherwise I'll change it. — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:14, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
        Er... see the section above. Joe D (t) 20:20, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Template:Notmoved violet/riga (t) 09:57, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

the Other DNA

There ought to be a mention of Douglas Noel Adams on the page. 24.91.43.225 17:26, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There is - the top link goes to the disambiguation page. Tufflaw 19:04, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup

Ok, so this page has been listed on Wikipedia:Cleanup. Before attampting any changes I think it would be a good idea to sketch out what the article should look like here. User:Jerzy listed the page and notes: "oversized article (30K, 11 main hdgs & 19 subordinate ones) should have most main sections reduced to summaries with no subordinate hdgs but links to 'Main articles'". I agree and sugest the following sections, each with its own main article:

Molecular structure and mechanical properties - two subsections / two "main articles". Including information on "Direction of DNA strands".
DNA fingerprinting for crime and for identification of unknown people / parents etc. and also possibly in fiction.
Replication - this has already been done, I think the section needs to be a little longer.
History of DNA research.
What I am less sure about is The role of the sequence - should this be included in a section called, e.g. DNA and [the encoding of] genes?

Comments are very welcome! Andreww 09:37, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

P.S. This talk page also needs cleaning up (archiving).

I just reverted some changes to the page to make the structure agree with the project science to-do list at the top of the page. Does anybody think this list is a sensible structure for the page? Also, as nobody has complained about my proposed cleanup plan I am going to get started. Andreww 08:45, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't really support moving content out of this article into daughter articles. The disorganised feeling is mainly due to all the ==h3== and ====h4==== headings. There should be a section on DNA applications and not where it occurs in the article now, the DNA in brief should be written as prose or deleted all together.--nixie 08:53, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If you are goign to go ahead with breaking the article up the Direction of DNA strands should probably go with the mechanical properties--nixie 08:55, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I feel a bit sad about that revert now that all my work is gone :-/ It was more or less my first 'effort' here in the Wikipedia and maybe I haven't understand the way of working... I thought since there is a to-do list I should follow it to arrange the structure... if not, why is that to-do list there? Who wrote it? I thought it was a group of people after a debate that took part in the past or something like this... or is it neccessary to debate about the structure again? Alzhaid 15:53, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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