They have been specially researched in bacterial chromosomes and in the so-called Bacterial Interspersed Mosaic Elements ( BIMEs) scattered over them.

Palindromic motifs are found in most genomes or sets of genetic instructions. The stem portion of the hairpin is a pseudo-double stranded portion since the entire hairpin is a part of same (single) strand of nucleic acid. For example, the DNA sequence ACCTAGGT is palindromic with its nucleotide-by-nucleotide complement TGGATCCA because reversing the order of the nucleotides in the complement gives the original sequence.Ī palindromic nucleotide sequence is capable of forming a hairpin. Since a double helix is formed by two paired antiparallel strands of nucleotides that run in opposite directions, and the nucleotides always pair in the same way ( adenine (A) with thymine (T) in DNA or uracil (U) in RNA cytosine (C) with guanine (G)), a (single-stranded) nucleotide sequence is said to be a palindrome if it is equal to its reverse complement. The meaning of palindrome in the context of genetics is slightly different from the definition used for words and sentences. This definition of palindrome thus depends on complementary strands being palindromic of each other. 5' to 3') on one strand is identical to the sequence in the same direction (e.g. A palindromic sequence is a nucleic acid sequence in a double-stranded DNA or RNA molecule whereby reading in a certain direction (e.g.

6 base palindromic sequence