The nontranscribed strand of a gene, the DNA sequence of which is identical to the RNA transcript.

The strand of DNA that has the same nucleotide sequence as the mRNA (except the DNA has T where the RNA has U residues). Check out the supplemental resources for a diagram. Note that "sense strand" is sometimes used in different ways in the scientific literature, so it is critical to explicitly indicate what you mean when using this term.

the strand of DNA where the promoter site is located, and mRNA receives its messages from the promoter site.

Most genetic material, both DNA and RNA, appears as two chains or strands of nucleotides wound together into a double helix - the common picture of DNA. Each nucleotide - A, T, C and G - has an attractive opposite (A attracts T, C attracts G). As a result, one strand, the "sense" strand, contains the information (for example, ATG-AAA) and the other strand, the "antisense" strand contains the opposite of this information (TAC-TTT - according to the pairing rules). Antisense RNA is the "antisense" half of a complete double RNA strand. RNA viruses consist of two types - "sense" RNA viruses, whose genetic material consists of the "sense" half of a complete strand, and "antisense" RNA viruses, which have the "antisense" half. Sense RNA viruses can have their genetic material read out directly by the ribosomes of their host cells - antisense RNA viruses must first copy themselves into a "sense" strand of RNA.

The strand of DNA that acts as the template for RNA synthesis.

the portion of the DNA double helix that is transcribed during protein synthesis (as opposed to the antisense strand).

The DNA strand of a gene that is complementary in sequence to the template (antisense) strand, and identical to the transcribed mRNA sequence (except that DNA contains T where RNA has U). Gene sequences found in databases are always of the sense strand, in the 5' to 3' direction.

Sense strand is the strand of DNA during transcription which is not transcribed into mRNA. This is because it is co-linear as opposed to complementary for the RNA sequence. It makes "sense" with the genetic code as the translated protein peptide sequence can be directly inferred from this strand.