{"entity":{"id":"dna-term","kind":"term","name":"DNA","aka":["deoxyribonucleic acid","double helix","genetic code","genome"],"tldr":"The long molecule that stores the instructions for building and running a cell, written in a four-letter chemical alphabet. Cancer is fundamentally a disease of damaged DNA.","summary":"DNA is a twisted ladder of two strands whose rungs are pairs of four bases (A, T, C, G); the order of those bases encodes about 20,000 genes plus the switches that control them. Every time a cell divides it must copy all three billion letters, and copying errors, radiation, tobacco chemicals and other insults introduce mutations that accumulate over a lifetime. Sequencing a tumour's DNA reveals which genes are broken and often which drug might work; sequencing DNA fragments in blood (ctDNA) lets doctors track the tumour without a biopsy.","asOf":"2026-09-09","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA","links":[{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA"}],"tags":[],"related":["gene","mutation","rna","chromosome","ctdna","ngs","genomic-profiling"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"category":"Biology basics"},"route":"/terms/dna-term/","neighbours":{"term":[{"id":"chromosome","kind":"term","name":"Chromosome","route":"/terms/chromosome/"},{"id":"ctdna","kind":"term","name":"Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA)","route":"/terms/ctdna/"},{"id":"gene","kind":"term","name":"Gene","route":"/terms/gene/"},{"id":"genomic-profiling","kind":"term","name":"Genomic profiling","route":"/terms/genomic-profiling/"},{"id":"mutation","kind":"term","name":"Mutation","route":"/terms/mutation/"},{"id":"ngs","kind":"term","name":"Next-generation sequencing (NGS)","route":"/terms/ngs/"},{"id":"nucleus","kind":"term","name":"Nucleus","route":"/terms/nucleus/"},{"id":"radiotherapy","kind":"term","name":"Radiotherapy","route":"/terms/radiotherapy/"},{"id":"rna","kind":"term","name":"RNA","route":"/terms/rna/"}]}}