Definition of Nucleic acid

1. Noun. (biochemistry) any of various macromolecules composed of nucleotide chains that are vital constituents of all living cells.

Category relationships: Biochemistry
Group relationships: Deoxyribonucleic Acid, Desoxyribonucleic Acid, Dna, Ribonucleic Acid, Rna
Generic synonyms: Macromolecule, Supermolecule

Medical Definition of Nucleic acid

1. Linear polymers of nucleotides, linked by 3', 5' phosphodiester linkages. In DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, the sugar group is deoxyribose and the bases of the nucleotides adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. RNA, ribonucleic acid, has ribose as the sugar and uracil replaces thymine. DNA functions as a stable repository of genetic information in the form of base sequence. RNA has a similar function in some viruses but more usually serves as an informational intermediate (mRNA), a transporter of amino acids (tRNA), in a structural capacity or, in some newly discovered instances, as an enzyme. The spontaneous loss of the amino groups of cytosine (yielding uracil), methyl cytosine (yielding thymine) or of adenine (yielding hypoxanthine). It can be argued that the presence of thymine in DNA in place of the uracil of RNA stabilises genetic information against this lesion, since repair enzymes would restore the GU base pair to GC. This entry appears with permission from the Dictionary of Cell and Molecular Biology (11 Mar 2008)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Nucleic Acid

nucleate
nucleate
nucleated
nucleated
nucleates
nucleate endonuclease
nucleating
nucleation
nucleation
nucleations
nucleator
nucleators
nuclei
nuclei
nucleic acid (current term)
nucleic acid (current term)
nucleic acids
nucleic acid base
nucleic acid conformation
nucleic acid denaturation
nucleic acid heteroduplexes
nucleic acid hybridization
nucleic acid precursors
nucleic acid probe
nucleic acid probes
nucleic acid renaturation
nucleic acid synthesis inhibitors
nucleide
nucleides
nucleiform

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