The nucleotide bases match up in their Watson-Crick pairs – A ( Adenine) with T ( Thymine) for DNA or U ( Uracil) for RNA, and G ( Guanine) with C ( Cytosine). For example, a sequence may be CAAGCTTG in the 5’ to 3’ direction on one strand, and therefore it will be GTTCGAAC in the 3’ to 5’ direction on the complementary strand. In DNA or RNA, the nucleotide base sequence is the same on the two different complementary strands of the helical structure. In molecular biology however, palindromic sequences are used their basic principles vary from those of a palindromic word.
A palindrome is where a word can be read the same way in either the forward or backwards directions, for example, Hannah, racecar, and the longest palindrome in the Oxford English Dictionary, tattarrattat.
