base pair

American  

noun

Genetics.

1. any of the pairs of the hydrogen-bonded purine and pyrimidine bases that form the links between the sugar-phosphate backbones of nucleic acid molecules: the pairs are adenine and thymine in DNA, adenine and uracil in RNA, and guanine and cytosine in both DNA and RNA.

---

base pair Scientific  

1. Any of the pairs of nucleotides connecting the complementary strands of a molecule of DNA or RNA and consisting of a purine linked to a pyrimidine by hydrogen bonds. The base pairs are adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine in DNA, and adenine-uracil and guanine-cytosine in RNA or in hybrid DNA-RNA pairing. Base pairs may be thought of as the rungs of the DNA ladder.

---

Etymology

Origin of base pair

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

"In addition, the built-in unnatural base pair enables alternative binding options to target molecules in the cell," added Hannah Depmeier, lead author of the study.

From Science Daily • Mar. 8, 2024

They then screened every single base pair on the DNA -- 100 million base pairs -- and identified which mutations restored the worms' ability to reproduce.

From Science Daily • Jan. 4, 2024

Such an altered base pair, known as a tautomer, can quickly jump back to its original arrangement.

From Scientific American • Sep. 21, 2022

Genome mapping is necessary to know the base pair difference between the markers.

From Textbooks • Jun. 9, 2022

Gene, protein, function, and fate were strung in a chain: one chemical alteration in one base pair in DNA was sufficient to “encode” a radical change in human fate.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee