DNA, three little letters that hold such power over every living thing. DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, holds the codes which are the building blocks that create the proteins for making each living thing and their specific structure within a species. It gives each one traits, even though we may or may not see them, which produces a unique organism. Think of your own traits. People can see your eye color, or that you have curly hair, but they don’t see your blood type, or that you may be allergic to peanuts. Your DNA carries all the messages needed to make you unique and the same is true for plants such as corn.
Corn, while it seems like a simple plant, is very complex. It has a much more complicated genome, which is the complete set of chromosomes of an organism, than one might expect. Corn has 2 billion base pairs making it one of the most difficult plants to decode. The base pairs, adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine make up the genetic sequence which determines the specific traits of each kernel of corn. These traits provide information for plant height, kernel color, and shape of the kernel.
In recent years, due to the understanding of the corn genome, research has allowed scientists to alter the genetic codes to increase corn’s resistance to certain diseases and drought which enables farmers to produce more corn to meet the growing population in our world.
