Question

For Biochem, could you please give some main ideas on Nucleic Acids? Thanks!

Answer 1

Nucleic acids are the small biomolecules or biopolymers . Nucleic acid is of two types in all living systems i.e. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid). DNA is genetic material in organisms except some viruses and RNA is genetic material in riboviruses , in others RNA functions as a messenger carrying genetic information Nucleic acid is composed of individual acid units termed nucleotides. In nucleic acids each repeating unit i.e. nucleotide(monomer) comprises three units linked together (a phosphate group, a 5-carbon sugar, and one of the four bases)

There are two types of nitrogenous bases:-

Purines :- e.g Adenine (A) and Guanine (G)

Pyrimidines:- e.g Cytosine (C) ,Thymine (T) and Uracil (U) . Thymine is present in DNA and uracil is present in RNA whereas cytosine is common in both.

Nucleic acid is the most important of all biomolecules. These are found in abundance in all living organisms where they function to create and encode and then store information of every living cell The encoded information is contained and conveyed via the nucleic acid sequence into the next generation of each living organism.

The specific sequencing in DNA of these nucleobase pair enables storing and transmitting coded instructions as genes.
In RNA, base-pair sequencing provides for manufacturing new proteins that determine the parts and most chemical processes of all living forms