what breaks down dna?

Answer 1

any strong acid will destroy dna, Any one who has watched CSI knows that bleach poured down a drain will destroy blood and hair evidence(not planning on 'offing' someone, are you? Just kidding!)

Answer 2

There are a large number of chemicals, enzymes and treatments that will break down DNA. Enzymatically, proteins like DNAse I and II will degrade DNA, as will restriction endonucleases. Chemically, any number of reagents will degrade DNA including strong acids and yes as someone else has suggested free radicals. In the cell, there are some scavenger pathways that will breakdown DNA.

Answer 3

As far as I know DNA is not broken down by any means (unless you're talking about mutations which i highly doubt). DNA is unwound by the enzyme helicase as someone already pointed out. Then you're left with two strands, one (in the case of transcription/RNA syntehsis) or both (in the case of DNA replication) is/are used as a template to build a complementary strand.

Answer 4

Jaq is correct; also, heat will make DNA 'uncurl' into two strands of RNA. If you heat DNA slowly in a soup of base pairs, then cool it down slowly, it will "zip back up" grabbing onto the appropriate opposite base pair from the 'soup' (so now you have two identical strands of DNA where before you only hade one!). If you do that a lot of times, you can turn a very tiny amount of DNA into a big enough sample for analysis. (It's called "PCR" or polymerase chain reaction)

Answer 5

Helicase "unzips" DNA to produce RNA in order to uncode enzymes.

Restriction enzymes cleave DNA to make recombinant DNA for genetic engineering purposes.

Answer 6

Hi. Assuming you mean what CHANGES DNA, cosmic rays and certain chemicals can cause mutations.

Answer 7

UV rays

Answer 8

Ask the FBI

Answer 9

d e a t h

Answer 10

Free radicals