How to recognize Left-Handed and Right-Handed DNA?

The only purpose of this video to teach you how to recognize - right and left-handedness of DNA. (DNA shown in the video is not perfect representation of A, B, and Z conformation of DNA) but clearly shows conceptual idea of right and left-handedness of DNA. When you see DNA depicted as a double helix, you can clearly see that its structure is twisted. That twist makes DNA a “chiral“ molecule, meaning it is asymmetric in such a way that a DNA molecule and its mirror image are not superimposable. Examples of chirality are everywhere. Take your hands, for example. For all intents and purposes, your left hand and right hand are mirror images of one another, but no matter how you twist or position either hand, you’ll find that it is impossible to orient the two of them in exactly the same way. Chirality is the reason you can’t shake a person’s right hand with your left, or wear your left shoe on your right foot. Chiral molecules are said to possess “handedness,“ and in DNA, that handedness is characterized by the direction of its twisting strands. DNA’s right-handedness can be identified by a simple trick involving your hands. Take your right hand and, with your thumb pointing upward, imagine grasping the spiral pictured here (in this diagram there is only one helix... in DNA there are two, but this rule still applies). Now imagine your hand twisting around the outside of the spiral, tracing its grooves in the direction that your fingertips are pointing. Your hand should rotate upward along the helix. If you try this trick with your left hand, again grasping the helix with your thumb pointing up, you’ll notice that following the rotation of the helix in the direction your fingertips are pointing will cause your hand to move downward. That means that if you’re reading an article online or in a magazine and it features a picture of a left-handed double helix, that picture is wrong, wrong, wrong. #DNA #helix #genetics #lefthandedDoubleHelix #righthandedDoubleHelix #dnaStructure #adnaBdnaAndZdna #BDNA #ZDNA #ADNA #majorGrooveAndMinorGroove #helixParameter #differenceBetweenADNABDNAAndZDNA #ADNAVsBDNAVsZDNA #NikolaysGeneticsLessons #ADNA #bDna #zDna #science #biology #differenceBetweenA #sDna #dnaStructureDifference #structureOfNucleicAcid #theStructureOfNucleicAcid #structureOfDna #doubleHelix