BASE PAIR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does base pair mean? 

• BASE PAIR (noun)
  The noun BASE PAIR has 1 sense:

1. one of the pairs of chemical bases joined by hydrogen bonds that connect the complementary strands of a DNA molecule or of an RNA molecule that has two strands; the base pairs are adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine in DNA and adenine with uracil and guanine with cytosine in RNA

  Familiarity information: BASE PAIR used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BASE PAIR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

One of the pairs of chemical bases joined by hydrogen bonds that connect the complementary strands of a DNA molecule or of an RNA molecule that has two strands; the base pairs are adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine in DNA and adenine with uracil and guanine with cytosine in RNA

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("base pair" is a kind of...):

base; nucleotide (a phosphoric ester of a nucleoside; the basic structural unit of nucleic acids (DNA or RNA))

Holonyms ("base pair" is a part of...):

deoxyribonucleic acid; desoxyribonucleic acid; DNA ((biochemistry) a long linear polymer found in the nucleus of a cell and formed from nucleotides and shaped like a double helix; associated with the transmission of genetic information)

 Context examples 

Chromosome 22 spans about 49 million base pairs and represents between 1.5 and 2% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 22, NCI Thesaurus)

Chromosome 20 spans around 63 million base pairs and represents between 2 and 2.5% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 20, NCI Thesaurus)

Chromosome 3 spans almost 200 million base pairs and represents about 6.5% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 3, NCI Thesaurus)

Chromosome 4 spans more than 186 million base pairs and represents between 6 and 6.5% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 4, NCI Thesaurus)

Chromosome 5 spans about 181 million base pairs and represents almost 6% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 5, NCI Thesaurus)

Chromosome 2 spans more than 237 million base pairs and represents almost 8% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 2, NCI Thesaurus)

Chromosome 19 spans more than 63 million base pairs and represents between 2 and 2.5% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 19, NCI Thesaurus)

The result, in modern-day peanuts, is a complex genomic blend that’s nearly as big as the human genome, which is about 3 billion DNA base pairs.

(Peanut Genome Sequenced with Unprecedent Accuracy, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

Chromosome 16 spans about 90 million base pairs and represents just under 3% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 16, NCI Thesaurus)

Chromosome 17 spans more than 81 million base pairs and represents between 2.5 and 3% of the total DNA in normal diploid cells.

(Chromosome 17, NCI Thesaurus)