


The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.ĭNA bases pair up with each other, A with T and C with G, to form units called base pairs. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Mitochondria are structures within cells that convert the energy from food into a form that cells can use.

Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA). Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms.
