Downstream is the direction in a nucleic acid molecule that points into the 3' end of the nucleic acid molecule.
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Downstream
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The terms "downstream" and "upstream" are used in molecular biology and genetics to refer to the transcriptional direction and position of nucleotide sequences surrounding a coding region.
Each DNA or RNA strand has a 5′- and 3′-end that relates to specific carbon atoms of (deoxy)ribose. Here, it was determined that upstream or downstream refers to the 5′→3′ direction of DNA transcription. Here, the transcription direction toward the 3′-end is referred to as downstream.
The opposite direction to the 5′-end is referred to as upstream. In double-stranded DNA, this is always based on the codogenic strand (template strand) of the gene in question. Due to the mirror-image structure of DNA, upstream and downstream are reversed in the case of the non-matrix strand - viewed from the matrix strand.