Nucleic acids are polynucleotides\u2014that is, long chainlike molecules composed of a series of nearly identical building blocks called\u00a0nucleotides. Each\u00a0nucleotide\u00a0consists of a nitrogen-containing aromatic base attached to a pentose (five-carbon)\u00a0sugar, which is in turn attached to a\u00a0phosphate\u00a0group. Each nucleic acid contains four of five possible nitrogen-containing\u00a0bases:\u00a0adenine\u00a0(A),\u00a0guanine\u00a0(G),\u00a0cytosine\u00a0(C),\u00a0thymine\u00a0(T), and\u00a0uracil\u00a0(U). A and G are categorized as\u00a0purines, and C, T, and U are collectively called\u00a0pyrimidines. All nucleic acids contain the bases A, C, and G; T, however, is found only in DNA, while U is found in RNA. The pentose sugar in DNA (2\u2032-deoxyribose) differs from the sugar in RNA (ribose) by the absence of a\u00a0hydroxyl group\u00a0(\u2015OH) on the 2\u2032\u00a0carbon\u00a0of the sugar ring. Without an attached phosphate group, the sugar attached to one of the bases is known as a\u00a0nucleoside. The phosphate group connects successive sugar residues by bridging the 5\u2032-hydroxyl group on one sugar to the 3\u2032-hydroxyl group of the next sugar in the chain. These nucleoside linkages are called phosphodiester bonds and are the same in RNA and DNA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nucleic acids are polynucleotides\u2014that is, long chainlike molecules composed of a series of nearly identical building blocks called\u00a0nucleotides. Each\u00a0nucleotide\u00a0consists of a nitrogen-containing aromatic base attached to a pentose (five-carbon)\u00a0sugar, which is in turn attached to a\u00a0phosphate\u00a0group. Each nucleic acid contains four of five possible nitrogen-containing\u00a0bases:\u00a0adenine\u00a0(A),\u00a0guanine\u00a0(G),\u00a0cytosine\u00a0(C),\u00a0thymine\u00a0(T), and\u00a0uracil\u00a0(U). A and G are categorized as\u00a0purines, and C, T, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nucleic-acids"],"Cooking_time":"","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cake.appscodestudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}