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Chemical structure of DNA. Primary structure consists of a linear sequence of nucleotides that are linked together by phosphodiester bonds. It is this linear sequence of nucleotides that make up the primary structure of DNA or RNA. Nucleotides consist of 3 components: Nitrogenous base. Adenine; Guanine; Cytosine; Thymine (present in DNA only)
The primary structure of a biopolymer is the exact specification of its atomic composition and the chemical bonds connecting those atoms (including stereochemistry).For a typical unbranched, un-crosslinked biopolymer (such as a molecule of a typical intracellular protein, or of DNA or RNA), the primary structure is equivalent to specifying the sequence of its monomeric subunits, such as amino ...
Three DNA conformations are believed to be found in nature, A-DNA, B-DNA, and Z-DNA. The "B" form described by James D. Watson and Francis Crick is believed to predominate in cells. [ 2 ] James D. Watson and Francis Crick described this structure as a double helix with a radius of 10 Å and pitch of 34 Å , making one complete turn about its ...
The chemical structure of RNA is very similar to that of DNA, but differs in three primary ways: Unlike double-stranded DNA, RNA is usually a single-stranded molecule (ssRNA) [4] in many of its biological roles and consists of much shorter chains of nucleotides. [5]
Nucleic acids are generally very large molecules. Indeed, DNA molecules are probably the largest individual molecules known. Well-studied biological nucleic acid molecules range in size from 21 nucleotides (small interfering RNA) to large chromosomes (human chromosome 1 is a single molecule that contains 247 million base pairs [18]).
RNA-dependent DNA polymerases are a specialized class of polymerases that copy the sequence of an RNA strand into DNA. They include reverse transcriptase , which is a viral enzyme involved in the infection of cells by retroviruses , and telomerase , which is required for the replication of telomeres.
DNA is transcribed into mRNA molecules, which travel to the ribosome where the mRNA is used as a template for the construction of the protein strand. Since nucleic acids can bind to molecules with complementary sequences, there is a distinction between " sense " sequences which code for proteins, and the complementary "antisense" sequence ...
Similarly other biomolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids have four levels of structural arrangement: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure. Primary structure is the linear sequence of nucleotides, secondary structure involves small local folding motifs, and tertiary structure is the 3D folded shape of nucleic acid molecule.