Identify the three subunits in nucleic acids?
1 Answer
Sep 13, 2016
A phosphate group, a sugar group and a nitrogenous base.
Explanation:
I think the question is what the three subunits of nucleotides are.
Nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) are large polymers, made out of monomer building blocks called nucleotides.
The nucleotides have a similar structure with three 'subunits':
- A phosphate group
- A sugar group : deoxyribose in DNA and ribose in RNA
- A nitrogenous base : adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine or uracil.
In a polymer these nucleotides form a backbone with the phosphate and sugar groups. The nitrogenous bases protrude from that backbone. RNA is a single strand. DNA is a double strand in which the nitrogenous bases pair up between two backbones: