Question: Does DNA really look like how it typically does?

Andrew Senior answered on 25 Feb 2026:

It’s called a double helix, and yes. A helix is a strand that spirals along it’s axis. A double helix is just two of these running in parallel.

You will see some imaginative representations in literature where it looks like a network of colourful bubbles and tubes. But you have to remember that it’s a molecule and therefore impossible to photograph. In truth, it’s colourless and unimaginably tiny.