base pairn.
/ˈbeɪs ˌpɛː/, U.S. /ˈbeɪs ˈpɛ(ə)r/ Biochemistry.
A pair of complementary bases on opposing strands of double-stranded DNA or RNA, consisting of a purine in one strand linked by hydrogen bonds to a pyrimidine in the other; such a pair constituting a unit in which to express the size of a DNA or RNA molecule. Cf. base n.1 14b.Cytosine always pairs with guanine, and adenine with thymine (in DNA) or uracil (in RNA).
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base pair1955
base pairing1956
bp1970
1955 AIBS Bull. 5 15/2 In gene mutation base-pair proportions and sequences are altered by substitution, deletion or rearrangement.
1956 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 42 61 The base pairs resulting from the above considerations are listed.
1962 Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 26 51/2 The 2 x 105 basepairs of T2 seem to form a continuous double-chain of phosphate-ester bonds.
1975 Nature 12 June 530/1 The DNA in chromatin exists in some regular fold which repeats every 200 base pairs.
1991 D. J. Weatherall New Genetics & Clin. Pract. (ed. 3) iii. 69 In each human cell, double-stranded DNA..consists of about 3–3.5 × 109 base pairs.
2001 Nature 26 Apr. 1040/1 Its genome [sc. that of an alga] weighs in at a mere 0.55 million base pairs.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2011; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1955