Heteroduplex

Under heteroduplex is defined as a double-stranded ( duplex, double lat ) nucleic acid molecule which is different from single strands ( heteros, Greek the other) origin is composed. The single strands are held together by hydrogen bonds between complementary nucleic bases. Sections in which the bases are not complementary to each other, form of loops. At the single-stranded, it may be single-stranded DNA (ssDNA ) or RNA, hybridized to each other.

The fit of the base pairing can be determined by melting analysis of the double helix, because a heteroduplex with an increasing proportion of unpaired regions is unstable.

Example

To determine whether a gene contains introns, it can be hybridized with its RNA transcript. Without introns, a continuous heteroduplex structure forms, with introns forms of DNA strand heteroduplex loops since the spliced ​​RNA contains no introns and so lacks a complementary counterpart.