Palindrome

See Palindromic sequence.

A segment of double-stranded DNA, in which the order of bases, read 5'?3' in one strand, is the same as that in the complementary antiparallel strand, also read 5'?3'. If the sequence is written in the normal convention, on two lines with paired bases shown one above the other, the base order on one strand runs in the opposite direction to that on the complementary strand. They are often found at the ends of transposable elements, and recognition sites for type II restriction endonucleases are also palindromes. Synonym: inverted repeat.