Some Hidden Messages are More Surprising than Others

Recall that nucleotides A and T are complements of each other, as are C and G. Having one strand of DNA and a supply of “free floating” nucleotides as shown in figure below, one can imagine the synthesis of a complementary strand on a template strand. This model of replication was confirmed by Meselson and Stahl in 1958 (see DETOUR: The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology). The figure below shows a template strand AGTCGCATAGT and its complementary strand ACTATGCGACT.