Erwin Chargaff鈥檚 discovery that DNA contains equimolar amounts of guanine and cytosine and also equimolar amounts of adenine and thymine has come to be known as Chargaff鈥檚 rule:
G = C and A = T
(a) Does Chargaff鈥檚 rule imply that equal amounts of guanine and adenine are present in DNA? That is, does G = A?
(b) Does Chargaff鈥檚 rule imply that the sum of the purine residues equals the sum of the pyrimidine residues? That is, does A + G = C + T?
(c) Does Chargaff鈥檚 rule apply only to double-stranded DNA, or would it also apply to each individual strand if the double helical strand were separated into its two complementary strands?