Both Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) are called as vehicles of genetic inheritance and found in the nuclei of living cells. They are composed of long strand of Nucleotides.

Nitrogen base, five-carbon sugar and a phosphate group combine to form nucleotides.

Nitrogen bases in DNA are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. Adenine and guanine are purines. Thymine and cytosine are pyrimidines. The thymine nucleotide not present in RNA, it is replaced by uracil.

The nitrogenous bases always pair up in complementary manner which means purine base pairs with pyrimidine which are held together by weak hydrogen bonds. Uracil, instead of thymine pairs with adenine in RNA. Usually RNA is single-stranded and does not form a double helix as DNA.

The Sugar present in the nucleotides makes RNA different from DNA. RNA molecule consists of ribose sugar, thus called as Ribonucleic acid and DNA molecule consists of deoxyribose sugar, thus called as Deoxyribonucleic acid.

Each nucleotide consists of a sugar which is present in between the phosphate group and a nitrogenous base.

The post Both DNA and RNA are composed of nucleotides. What molecules combine to form nucleotides? appeared first on Questions House.