Composition : Nucleic acids like proteins and carbohydrates are polymer. The simple units that make up the nucleic acid are called nucleotides. Nucleotides are themselves composed of following three simple molecules.

(i) Nitrogenous base : These are heterocyclic organic compound having two or more nitrogen atoms in ring skeleton. These are called bases because the lone pairs of electrons on the nitrogen atoms make them as Lewis bases.

Their structures are given below

         (a) Pyrimidine derivatives

        (b) Purine derivatives

(ii) Five carbon sugar (Pentose) : In RNA, the sugar is ribose where as in DNA, the sugar is deoxyribose.

Both differ only at carbon atom 2' in the ring.

         (iii) Phosphoric acid, H₃PO₄ : Phosphoric acid forms esters to -OH groups of the sugars to bind nucleotide segments together. An atom known as nucleoside is formed by condensing molecules of the base with the appropriate pentose. (i.e., Base + Sugar).

A nucleotide results when the nucleoside combined with phosphoric acid mainly at carbon 5¢ of the pentose. (i.e., Base + Sugar + Phosphoric acid).

This nucleotide is the building block of both RNA and DNA. The nucleic acids are condensation polymers of the nucleotide monomers and are formed by the creation of an ester linkage from phosphoric residue on one nucleotide to the hydroxy group on carbon 3' in the pentose of the second nucleotide. The product is a very large chain possessing upto a billion or so nucleotides units in DNA.

Thus, the formation of a nucleic acid can be summarised in the following general way

RNA nucleotides

DNA nucleotides

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