Structure of Nucleic Acids

Structure of Nucleic Acids

     Like all natural molecules, nucleic acids are linear polymeric molecules. They are chain like polymers of thousands of nucleotide units, hence they are also called polynucleotides. A nucleotide consists of three subunits: nitrogen containing heterocyclic aromatic compound (calledbase), a pentose sugar and a molecule of phosphoric acid. So a nucleic acid chain is represented as shown below.

      In DNA molecules, the sugar moiety is 2 -deoxyribose, where in RNA molecules it is ribose. In DNA, four bases have been found. They are adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T). The first three of these bases are found in RNA also but the fourth is uracil (U). The sequence of different nucleotides in DNA is termed as its primary structure. Like proteins, they also have secondary structure. DNA is a double stranded helix. Two nucleic acid chains are wound about each other and held together by hydrogen bonds between pairs of bases. The hydrogen bonds are specific between pairs of bases that are guanine and cytosine form hydrogen bonds with each other, whereas adenine forms hydrogen bonds with thymine. The two stands are complementary to each other. The overall secondary structure resembles a flexible ladder (Fig. 1.1). This structure for DNA was proposed by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953.