Encyclopedia > Nucleotide

  Article Content

Nucleotide

A nucleotide is an organic molecule consisting of a nitrogenous heterocyclic base (a purine or a pyrimidine), a pentose sugar (deoxyribose in DNA or ribose in RNA), and a phosphate or polyphosphate group. (A nucleoside is similar, except that it contains only the sugar and base, without a phosphate.)

Nucleotides are the monomers of nucleic acids and also play important roles in cellular energy transport and transformations (notably ATP and NAD+/NADH[?]) and in enzyme regulation (see for example, protein kinase).



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

... Perhaps the Canadian Charter's single overriding limitation upon all of the enumerated rights is much more general limitaton than the specific limiations in the European ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 31.3 ms