Meaning & use
base pair
Two complementary nucleotide bases, such as adenine and thymine, joined together in a DNA or RNA molecule.
See it in a sentence
A single mutation changed one base pair in the gene, altering the protein it produced.
Scientists counted billions of base pairs while mapping the entire human genome.
A note on using this word
In DNA, base pairs always follow strict pairing rules: adenine with thymine, and cytosine with guanine.
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