Nucleic acids are macromolecules essential for all forms of life, and they are primarily composed of the following elements:
- Carbon (C): A fundamental component of the nucleotides that make up nucleic acids.
- Hydrogen (H): Present in the sugar and phosphoric acid components of nucleic acids.
- Oxygen (O): Found in the phosphate group and the sugar (ribose in RNA, deoxyribose in DNA).
- Nitrogen (N): Present in the nitrogenous bases (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine in DNA; and adenine, uracil, cytosine, guanine in RNA).
- Phosphorus (P): Found in the phosphate groups that link the nucleotides together in the nucleic acid backbone.
Together, these elements form the basic structure of nucleotides, which are the building blocks of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA).