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Adenine (/ ˈ æ d ɪ n iː n /, / ˈ æ d ɪ n ɪ n /) (symbol A or Ade) is a purine nucleotide base. It is one of the nucleobases in the nucleic acids, DNA and RNA. The shape of adenine is complementary to either thymine in DNA or uracil in RNA. In cells adenine, as an independent molecule, is rare.
The molecule consists of an adenine attached to a ribose via a β-N 9-glycosidic bond. Adenosine is one of the four nucleoside building blocks of RNA (and its derivative deoxyadenosine is a building block of DNA ), which are essential for all life on Earth.
Nucleobases such as adenine, guanine, xanthine, hypoxanthine, purine, 2,6-diaminopurine, and 6,8-diaminopurine may have formed in outer space as well as on earth. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ] The origin of the term base reflects these compounds' chemical properties in acid–base reactions , but those properties are not especially important for ...
Purines are biologically synthesized as nucleotides and in particular as ribotides, i.e. bases attached to ribose 5-phosphate.Both adenine and guanine are derived from the nucleotide inosine monophosphate (IMP), which is the first compound in the pathway to have a completely formed purine ring system.
[2] [3] Each nucleotide is composed of one of four nitrogen-containing nucleobases (cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A] or thymine [T]), a sugar called deoxyribose, and a phosphate group. The nucleotides are joined to one another in a chain by covalent bonds (known as the phosphodiester linkage ) between the sugar of one nucleotide and the ...
This nucleotide contains the five-carbon sugar deoxyribose (at center), a nucleobase called adenine (upper right), and one phosphate group (left). The deoxyribose sugar joined only to the nitrogenous base forms a Deoxyribonucleoside called deoxyadenosine, whereas the whole structure along with the phosphate group is a nucleotide, a constituent of DNA with the name deoxyadenosine monophosphate.
The process of DNA denaturation can be used to analyze some aspects of DNA. Because cytosine / guanine base-pairing is generally stronger than adenine / thymine base-pairing, the amount of cytosine and guanine in a genome is called its GC-content and can be estimated by measuring the temperature at which the genomic DNA melts. [2]
A purine base always pairs with a pyrimidine base (guanine (G) pairs with cytosine (C) and adenine (A) pairs with thymine (T) or uracil (U)). DNA's secondary structure is predominantly determined by base-pairing of the two polynucleotide strands wrapped around each other to form a double helix .