BIO206H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Glycosidic Bond, Cyclic Adenosine Monophosphate, Pentose
Document Summary
The most famous polymer in bio is dna. To understand its structure and how it encodes info is critical. Dna is complimentary: it complements its nucleotide base pairs, lets you predict with certainty the pairing. Polarity: has 5 prime end and a 3 prime end: has a particular directionality. It retains an accurate copy of the molecule from gen to gen. Very simple mistakes in a critically imp gene can cause death of an organism: so the structure of the dna molecule allows for a high degree of accuracy. Stability: long term chemical stability under a wide variety of physiological conditions. Relatively inert molecule: many of the mutations occur through its limited reactivity. The foundation of it is the repeating sub units called nucleotides which themselves have numerous fxns: part of energy: atp and gtp, cyclic amp is another ribo-nucleotide. Nucleotides in general play very imp role in cellular metabolism in addition to structural fxns.
