Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids

Question 1

what elements are found in nucleotides?

Answer 1

C, H, O, N, P

Question 2

What are the components of a nucleotide?

Answer 2

-phosphate group
-pentose sugar (ribose or deoxyribose)
-nitrogenous base (pyrimidine/ purine)

Question 3

What bond joins nucleotides together?

Answer 3

phosphodiester bond

Question 4

What bases are purine and what is their structure?

Answer 4

Guanine and Adenine (made of 2 rings)

Question 5

What bases are pyrmidine?

Answer 5

Cytosine, Thymine and uracil (made of 1 ring)

Question 6

What is messenger RNA?

Answer 6

made in transcription, it is a copy of the DNA coding strand that can pass out of nuclear pore into cytoplasm

Question 7

What is transfer RNA?

Answer 7

made in the nucleus, folds into clover leaf shape. has an ACC site which can bind to an amino acid, has an anticodon that determines which amino acid binds.

Question 8

What are the properties of DNA?

Answer 8

-it is degenerate - more than one triplet codes for most amino acids which reduces the effect of mutations
-nonsense triplets - some triplets don’t code for any amino acids and tell ribosomes where to stop reading the code
-near universal code - almost all living organisms have the same triplets of DNA that code for the same amino acid
-Non overlapping - each base is only involved in one triplet

Question 9

What happens in transcription?

Answer 9

-In the nucleus, the gene unwinds and exposes the bases on the DNA strand
-Free RNA nucleotides pair up by complimentry base pairing
-RNA polymerase moves along mRNA from 5’ to 3’ catalysing the formation of phosphodiester bonds
-Stops when reaches a stop codon