The Components of Nucleic Acids
Nucleic acids are polymers called polynucleotides
Each polynucleotide is made of monomers called nucleotides
Each nucleotide consists of a nitrogenous base, a pentose sugar, and one or more phosphate
groups
The portion of a nucleotide without the phosphate group is called a nucleoside
Nucleoside = nitrogenous base + sugar
There are two families of nitrogenous bases
Pyrimidines (cytosine, thymine, and uracil) have a single six-membered ring
Purines (adenine and guanine) have a sixmembered ring fused to a five-membered ring
In DNA, the sugar is deoxyribose; in RNA, the sugar is ribose
Nucleotide = nucleoside + phosphate group