NSCI 1322 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Hydrogen Bond, Polynucleotide, Uracil
12 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Nucleic acids are vital to the life cycles of cells, because they are the carriers of species inheritance. There are two types of nucleic acids: deoxyribonucleic acid (dna) and ribonucleic acid (rna). The building blocks of nucleic acids are themselves composed of certain organic bases linked to either ribose or deoxyribose, both of which are sugar molecules. Monosaccharides are simple sugars, each containing three to nine carbon atoms, generally all but one of which bear a hydroxyl group. The remaining carbon atom is part of a carbonyl group, either an aldehyde or a ketone. The monosaccharides exist as - and -isomers, because each molecule has at least one carbon atom with four different groups attached. Only a few of the many known monosaccharides are of major biological importance. Although one often draws the simple sugars as straight-chain molecules, they do not exist predominantly in that form. The chain curls up and the carbonyl group reacts with an alcohol group.
