Question

Suppose you are performing an experiment in which you must use heat to denature a double helix and create two single stranded pieces. based on what you know about nucleotide bonding, do you think the nucleotides will all denature at the same time? use scientific reasoning to explain why.

Answer 1

When the double helix is denatured by application of heat all the nucleotides do not denature at the same time.

The reason behind this is that the two strands of DNA are held together by the hydrogen bonds that occur between the base pairs.

However, the hydrogen bonding always occurs between A and T and G and C.

Moreover, there are two hydrogen bonds (double bond) that exist between A and T and three hydrogen bonds (triple bond) that exist between G and C.

As the number of hydrogen bonds between G and C are more they require more heat energy to dissociate than A and T base pairs.

Answer 2

If you are performing an experiment in which you must use heat to denature a double helix and create two single stranded pieces, then the nucleotides will all denature at the same time because of the polymerase chain reactions that occur.