Nucleotides and Nucleic Acid - Introduction to Biology - 4.5 Article: Visit: http://academyofone.org Donate: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business;=KKTUS9EN6B46N&lc;=US&item;_name=Academy%20of%20One¤cy;_code=USD&bn;=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted Royalty free music licensed by www.stockmusic.net Welcome to this last video on the biological molecules. We are going to be finishing up unit 4 by talking about nucleotides and nucleic acid. What's going on everybody! My name is Jack Jenkins and this is Academy of One. Let's get started. What's a nucleotide you ask? A nucleotide is a molecule that is composed of three parts. The first part is a five-carbon sugar. The sugar could either be two different types. The first is ribose, a pentose monosaccharide containing five carbon, ten hydrogen and five oxygen. The other option is deoxyribose, a sugar that is formed by ribose by loss of an oxygen. This helps distinguish the nucleotides into two groups. Ones with ribose as a sugar and ones with deoxyribose as a sugar. The second part in the three part structure of a nucleotide is a phosphate group. A phosphate is an organic molecule consisting of an ester of phosphoric acid. An ester, not to be confused with the video-game dear ester, is a compound that has a carbonyl adjacent to an ether group. You want me to explain ether too? Fine! Ethers are a class of compounds that contain oxygen connected to alkyl, which is when an alkane is missing one hydrogen, or when the oxygen is connected to a aryl, which is a functional group derived from an aromatic ring. A nucleotide may have more than one phosphate group... Some of them like to gang up. The last part of a nucleotide is a nitrogenous base. A nitrogenous base is an organic molecule that has a nitrogen atom but acts like a base. Remember, the ph scale? I'm talking about that base, not the base that gets dropped in a dubby step song. Kids these days... A nitrogenous base is different for each nucleotide. The nitrogenous base is the thing that helps distinguished different bases from each other. There are four bases in nucleic acid. There's Adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. Adenine and guanine have double rings and cytosine and thymine have single rings. This will play an important role when we talk about DNA so... Keep this knowledge in yo head. Nucleotides serve many functions. One of the functions is to carry packets of energy. The ribose nucleotide adenosine triphosphate or ATP is the nucleotide that serves this function. The nucleotide carries energy all around a cell. The energy is released when there is a reaction needed to be done for instance, synthesizing our friend from the last video, protein. There are other nucleotides that carry energy, Flavin adenine dinucleotide or FAD for instance carries high-energy electrons. These nucleotides are known as "electron carriers" and will be discussed later. Gotta save some secrets for other units, am I right? Nucleotides tend to get lonely so monomers, or single nucleotides, decide to shack up with other nucleotides, becoming polymers. We call long strung polymers of nucleotides nucleic acids. Nucleic acids are formed by the oxygen in the functional group is covalently bonded to a sugar of the next nucleotide. When a bunch of deoxyribose nucleotides form we call them deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. When a bunch of ribose nucleotides form we call them ribonucleic acid or RNA. DNA and RNA are huge topics, in-fact, we have a whole unit dedicated to them. But for now, let's go ahead and party! Cause we are done with unit four! So guys, go ahead and visit Academyofone.org. Join AoO Prime for exclusive videos, early access to videos, see the site ad-free and so much more. Like, share and favorite all of the youtube videos. Remember to hangout with me every Tuesday and Thursday around 9 o'clock. You will be able to ask your questions live. If you want to see it in written form then visit the forums. I will be on there every day. Lastly, have an amazing day.

• published: 04 Jul 2014
• views: 9