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Color Key
Indicates one monomer within a polymer
NUCLEOTIDES
Phosphorous
Nucleotides are the building blocks of
your DNA and RNA. There are four nucleotides
in DNA, each composed of a base — adenine (A),
thymine (T), guanine (G) or cytosine (C) — a deoxyribose
sugar, and a phosphate group. In RNA, the deoxyribose is
replaced by ribose, and the thymine base is replaced by uracil.
In both DNA and RNA, enzymes called polymerases join the
monomer nucleotides together to make long polymers. Cells
use the unique sequence of nucleotides in DNA as a code to
build the correct sequence of amino acids in a protein.
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
Oxygen
Carbon
Deoxyadenosine Monophosphate
T
A
NUCLEIC ACIDS
Nucleic acids such as deoxyribonucleic
acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) are
composed of monomers known as
nucleotides. DNA is a long, linear polymer of
four different nucleotides — adenine, thymine,
guanine and cytosine (A,T,G,C). The sequence of
these four nucleotides in your DNA specifies the
sequence of amino acids in your proteins. Two strands
of DNA wrap around each other to form a right-handed
double helix. This double helix contains complementary
A-T and G-C base pairs. In 2001, researchers determined the
exact nucleotide sequence of the 3.2 billion base pairs of the
human genome.
C
G
DNA viewed from the
end showing the green
monomer.
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