Nucleic acids Flashcards
what process makes rna
transcription/rna polymerisation
what is the monomer of dna
nucleotides
what are the two types of nucleic acids
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA)
what is dna
located at the chromosomes in the nucleus of a eukaryotic cell. genetic material that contains hereditary information, sections of dna known as genes code for proteins
what is RNA
located in the nucleus, mitochondria, ribsomes, chloroplasts and cytoplasm and formed against a template strand of DNA
what is the nucleiod
folded chromosome
structure of a nucleotide
phosphate group, pentose sugar and nitrogenous base
what are the four nucleaic bases in DNA
adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine
nucleotide pairs
adenine and thymine (two bonds), cytosine and guanine (three bonds)
the process of DNA coiling
the double helix combines with proteins (mostly histones), as the dna winds around the histones they form structures called nucleosomes, nucleosomes further coil to form choromosomes (known as supercoiling)
which bases are purines (double ring)
adenine and guanine
which bases are pyrimidines (single ring)
cytosine, thymine and uracil
how do the strands of DNA run
template strand and coding strand run anti-parallel
what joines the sugar and the phosphate
phosphodiester bonds
how to number the carbons
number the carbons in a clockwise direction from the oxygen at the top of the pentose sugar
how do rna and dna differ
dna - douuuble stranded, rna- sigle stranded, rna - uracil, dna - thymine, dna - deoxyribose sugar, rna - ribose sugar
how does deoxyribose sugar differ from ribose sugar
it is missing an oxygen on the second OH (right side, joined to 2nd carbon) and therefore deoxy
what are the different types of RNA
messenger rna (mRNA), ribosomal rna (rRNA), transfer rna (tRNA)
what is messenger rna
created through transcription, a shorter, complementary copy of the template strand of dna, enables the code/instructions from the dna to leave the nucleus and move to the ribosome to be decoded
transfer rna
molecule of approx 80 nucleotides, folds upon itself to create an anticodon at one end and an amino acid joining position at the other
function of ribosomal rna
provides a mechanism for decoding mrna and interacts with trna during the process of translation
mrna structure
a single, linear strand of rna
trna structure
single strand folded into three hairpin loops to form a cloverleaf structure
rrna structure
folds into a large and small subunit to make up a ribosome
single ringed bases are called
pyrimidines
double ringed basea are called
purines
what does -ose show
the molecule contains/is a sugar
what is the reaction of dna to rna called
. rna polymerisation
what does -ase show
the molecule is an enzymes
what causes the helix in dna
dna naturally spins, making a complete right-handed twist for every 10.5 base pairs
