Nucleic Acids

Nucleic acids are biological molecules necessary for life, including DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid).  Together with proteins, nucleic acids form the most essential macromolecules;  every is situated in great quantity in every living things.

The very first seclusion of that which we now consider as DNA was achieved by Johann Friedrich Miescher 1870.

He noted getting a weakly citrus material of unidentified functionality inside nuclei of human white blood cells, and called this substance "nuclein".A several years after, Miescher divided nuclein into protein and nucleic acid elements.

In 1920's nucleic acids had been discovered to become main parts of chromosomes, smaller gene-carrying bodies inside nuclei of complicated cells.

The nucleic acids are extremely big molecules which have two major components. The spine of the nucleic acid consists of alternating sugar and phosphate molecules glued together in a long chain,showed below: 

 

sugar	phosphate	sugar	phosphate	...

Every one of the sugar groups within the spine is linked  (through the bond shown in red-colored) to a 3rd kind of molecule  known as a nucleotide base:

nucleotide base		nucleotide base
|		|
sugar	phosphate	sugar	phosphate	...

 There are actually two kinds of nitrogenous bases, purines, and pyrimidines. The purines are adenine(A), and guanine(G) and the pyrimidines are cytosine(C), Thymine(T), and Uracil(U).