Nucleic Acids

Every nucleotide ius made up of three components:

1) A pentose sugar (a sugar with five crabon atoms)

2)A phosphate group

3)A nitrogenous base (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine and urasil)

There is a specific process used to describe and explain how the three components are joined together which is called a CONDENSATION REACTION.

1. A condenstaion reaction (a loss of water) would join together the pentose sugar, phosphate group and nitrogenous base.

2. To form two mononucleotides (dinucleotide), the pentose sugar of one nucleotide would join with the phosphate group of the second nucleotide via a CONDENSATION REACTION.

3.The bond produced between them is called a PHOSPHODEISTER BOND.

4. Mononucleotides can keep linking to other nucleotides to form a POLYNUCLEOTIDE - a long chain of mononucleotides. 

RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) is composed of:                                                                                                     1) Ribose Sugar (pentose sugar)                                                                                                             2)A phopshate group                                                                                                                                   3) The bases Adenine, Uracil, Guanine and Cytosine                                                                           

There are many different types of RNA such as mRNA which transfers genetic information to the ribosomes from DNA, ribosomal RNA which is involved in protein synthesis and tRNA which is responsible in finding complimentary base sequences for amino acids.

The base pairs which are complemntary to one another are:                                                                       A-U (Adenine and uracil)        and             G-C (Guanine and Cytosine