base pair
6
3.9
- noun
- /beɪs pɛr/
- Specialized
:
par de bases
- This DNA molecule model has fifty of the base pair building blocks of DNA.
- base pair deletion
- DNA base pairs
- billion base pairs
And when these three bases meet the their their counterparts, they form base pairs just like the base pairs in adna Helix.
- And when these three bases meet the their their counterparts, they form base pairs just like the base pairs in adna Helix.
- There's four base pairs in DNA, but with those four, four base pairs in a specific sequence can generate an entire code for life.
Examples
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The DNA ofall life on Earth has only four base pairs.
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Their DNA has ten base pairs.
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The latest data sets we're getting consist of 100 million 51 base pair reads with associated quality data.
Blog text (16) -
And that single base pair change created a potent oncogene.
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In a human cell, this means that the entire three-billion-base-pair genome is reduced to fragments about 50 base pairs long.
Academic text (2010) -
There's four base pairs in DNA, but with those four, four base pairs in a specific sequence can generate an entire code for life.
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I look forward to the day, perhaps not far off, when we can identify the genes and even the base-pair substitutions responsible for phenotypic variation within populations and between species.
Academic text (2007) -
Biology rests on the digital information coded in a few billion base pairs, and the industrial-scale project to unravel the human genome will soon be complete.
Academic text (2000) -
The scientist explained that each gene consists of multiple base pairs that are crucial for DNA function.
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In order to study genetic variation, researchers analyze the sequence of base pairs in the DNA.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: 'base' (a nitrogenous base) combined with 'pair' (two matching items) yields the meaning 'two complementary nitrogenous bases'. This noun–noun construction follows regular English compounding and is cross-linguistically common in scientific terminology, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Base pair comes from the image of two base units fitting together like matched puzzle pieces, and a pair is simply two that match. So today 'base pair' means two matching building blocks that join the two strands of DNA.