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Without the phosphate group, the composition of the nucleobase and sugar is known as a nucleoside. The interchangeable nitrogenous nucleobases are derived from two parent compounds, purine and pyrimidine. Nucleotides are heterocyclic compounds, that is, they contain at least two different chemical elements as members of its rings. [citation needed]
This nucleotide contains the five-carbon sugar deoxyribose (at center), a nucleobase called adenine (upper right), and one phosphate group (left). The deoxyribose sugar joined only to the nitrogenous base forms a Deoxyribonucleoside called deoxyadenosine, whereas the whole structure along with the phosphate group is a nucleotide, a constituent of DNA with the name deoxyadenosine monophosphate.
The nitrogenous bases are either purines or pyrimidines, heterocycles whose structures support the specific base-pairing interactions that allow nucleic acids to carry information. The base is always bonded to the 1'-carbon of the deoxyribose, an analog of ribose in which the hydroxyl group of the 2'-carbon is replaced with a hydrogen atom.
This arrangement of two nucleotides binding together across the double helix (from six-carbon ring to six-carbon ring) is called a Watson-Crick base pair. DNA with high GC-content is more stable than DNA with low GC-content. A Hoogsteen base pair (hydrogen bonding the 6-carbon ring to the 5-carbon ring) is a rare variation of base-pairing. [26]
The viral polymerase incorporates these compounds with non-canonical bases. These compounds are activated in the cells by being converted into nucleotides; they are administered as nucleosides as charged nucleotides cannot easily cross cell membranes. [citation needed] At least one set of new base pairs has been announced as of May 2014. [15]
Synthetic nucleotides can be used to expand the genetic alphabet and allow specific modification of DNA sites. Even just a third base pair would expand the number of amino acids that can be encoded by DNA from the existing 20 amino acids to a possible 172. [8] Hachimoji DNA is built from eight nucleotide letters, forming four possible base ...
Nucleic acids are generally very large molecules. Indeed, DNA molecules are probably the largest individual molecules known. Well-studied biological nucleic acid molecules range in size from 21 nucleotides (small interfering RNA) to large chromosomes (human chromosome 1 is a single molecule that contains 247 million base pairs [18]).
Complementarity between two antiparallel strands of DNA. The top strand goes from the left to the right and the lower strand goes from the right to the left lining them up. Left: the nucleotide base pairs that can form in double-stranded DNA. Between A and T there are two hydrogen bonds, while there are three between C and G.