Word.ws English Dictionary

A-DNA

A-DNA noun: a configuration of DNA in cells, right-hand twisting double helix with a small size difference between major groove and minor groove, wider and more squashed twist than B-DNA; found during transcription and replication.

Noun

A-DNA (countable and uncountable, plural A-DNAs)

  1. (uncountable) A configuration of DNA in cells, right-hand twisting double helix with a small size difference between major groove and minor groove, wider and more squashed twist than B-DNA; found during transcription and replication.
  2. (countable) A DNA helix in such a configuration.

Forms of A-DNA

pluralA-DNAs

Origin of A-DNA

From A + DNA. Coined by Rosalind Franklin, for the first of two forms discovered during her X-ray crystallography experiments on DNA.

Questions about A-DNA

What does A-DNA mean?
A-DNA means a configuration of DNA in cells, right-hand twisting double helix with a small size difference between major groove and minor groove, wider and more squashed twist than B-DNA; found during transcription and replication.
What part of speech is A-DNA?
A-DNA is a noun.
What is the plural of A-DNA?
The plural of A-DNA is A-DNAs.

Words near A-DNA in the dictionary

  1. a-cross
  2. A-cup
  3. A-cupper
  4. A-cuppers
  5. A-Day
  6. A-DNA
  7. a-double-s
  8. a-double-s's
  9. A-erh-t'ai
  10. a-fib
  11. a-fibs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: A-DNA (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “A-DNA.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/a-dna. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.