Ribonucleic acid molecular structures

Nitrogenous base plus sugar moiety are called nucleosides. Ribonucleic acids (RNA) resemble DNA in that nucleoside monophosphates are joined through phosphodiester bonds. RNAs differ in that the sugars are p-D-ribose units and the pyrimidine uracil is found in place of thymine. Molecular structures and nomenclature for nitrogenous bases, nucleosides, and nucleotides are delineated in Table 2.2. 

Nucleotides have a variety of roles in cellular metabolism. They are the energy currency in metabolic transactions, the essential chemical links in the response of cells to hormones and other extracellular stimuli, and the structural components of an array of enzyme cofactors and metabolic intermediates. And, last but certainly not least, they are the constituents of nucleic acids deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (ENA), the molecular repositories of genetic information. The structure of every protein, and ultimately of every biomolecule and cellular component, is a product of information programmed into the nucleotide sequence of a cell s nucleic acids. The ability to store and transmit genetic information from one generation to the next is a fundamental condition for life. 

A typical molecular analysis of various micro-organisms is shown in Table 5.9U ) Most of the elemental composition of cells is found in three basic types of materials—proteins, nucleic acids and lipids. In Table 5.10, the molecular composi-tion of a bacterium is shown in more detail. Water is the major component of the cell and accounts for 80-90 per cent of the total weight, whilst proteins form the next most abundant group of materials and these have both structural and functional properties. Most of the protein present will be in the form of enzymes. Nucleic acids are found in various forms—ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Their primary function is the storage, transmission and... 

Fresco, J., Alberts, B., et al. (1960). Some molecular details of the secondary structure of ribonucleic acid. Nature 188, 98—101. 

Molecular biology also involves organic chemistry, physics, and biophysical chemistry as it deals with the physicochemical structure of macromolecules (nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates) and their interactions. Genetic materials including DNA in most of the living forms or RNA (ribonucleic acid) in all plant viruses and in some animal viruses remain the subjects of intense study. 

In deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) the carbohydrate is 2-deoxy-D-ribose, while in ribonucleic acid (RNA) the carbohydrate residue is ribose. Three types of RNA were recognized, and they can be messenger RNA (mRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA), or ribosomal RNA (rRNA), which is the most abundant in cells. Values between 10 and 10 Dalton have been reported for the molecular weight of DNA, and the molecular weight is about 10 for rRNA, 10 for mRNA, and lOMor rRNA. The simplified structures of DNA and RNA are the following ... 

As implied in the Introduction, both proteins and (deoxy)ribonucleic acids can be viewed as ideal tyligomers—that is, the archetypal biological examples of discrete, high molecular weight macromolecules of mixed sequences with compact solution conformations assembled from many subunits of secondary structure. In our assessment of the literature, we have organized foldamer systems into four... 

Biopolymers are either synthesized by template-dependent or template-independent enzymatic processes. For the synthesis of nucleic acids and proteins a template is required, whereas all other polymers are synthesized by template-independent processes. The templates for nucleic acids are desoxyribonucleic acids or ribonucleic acids depending on the type of nucleic acid synthesized. For proteins, the template is messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). This has different impacts on the structure and on the molecular weights (MWs) of the polymers. Although both nucleic acids and proteins are copolymers with each type consisting of 4 or 22 different constituents, respectively, the distribution of the constituents is absolutely defined by the matrix and is not random. Furthermore, each representative of the two polymers has a defined MW. Polymers synthesized in template-dependent processes are monodisperse. All this is different in polymers synthesized by template-independent processes first of all, these polymers are polydisperse secondly, if these polymers are copolymers, the distribution of the constituents is more or less fully random. 

Two types of polynucleotides may be distinguished through their structure deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) with molecular weights as high as 100 million and ribonucleic acids (RNA) with molecular weights up to 500,000. 

---