Question
What are nucleotides? What makes up a nucleotide?
Answers
GPT-4o mini
Nucleotides are the building blocks of nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA. Each nucleotide consists of three main components:
1. **Nitrogenous Base**: This part of the nucleotide can vary and is classified into two categories:
- **Purines**: Adenine (A) and Guanine (G).
- **Pyrimidines**: Cytosine (C), Thymine (T) — found in DNA, and Uracil (U) — found in RNA.
2. **Pentose Sugar**: This sugar molecule is either deoxyribose (in DNA) or ribose (in RNA). The difference lies in the presence of an oxygen atom; ribose has one more oxygen atom than deoxyribose.
3. **Phosphate Group**: This group consists of one or more phosphate (POâ‚„) groups. Nucleotides can have one, two, or three phosphate groups, which play a crucial role in energy transfer (for example, adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, has three phosphate groups).
These three components are covalently bonded together to form a nucleotide. The specific sequence of nucleotides in a nucleic acid determines the genetic information carried by that molecule.
1. **Nitrogenous Base**: This part of the nucleotide can vary and is classified into two categories:
- **Purines**: Adenine (A) and Guanine (G).
- **Pyrimidines**: Cytosine (C), Thymine (T) — found in DNA, and Uracil (U) — found in RNA.
2. **Pentose Sugar**: This sugar molecule is either deoxyribose (in DNA) or ribose (in RNA). The difference lies in the presence of an oxygen atom; ribose has one more oxygen atom than deoxyribose.
3. **Phosphate Group**: This group consists of one or more phosphate (POâ‚„) groups. Nucleotides can have one, two, or three phosphate groups, which play a crucial role in energy transfer (for example, adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, has three phosphate groups).
These three components are covalently bonded together to form a nucleotide. The specific sequence of nucleotides in a nucleic acid determines the genetic information carried by that molecule.