Molecule Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v1.26, by Herong Yang
What Is Nucleoside
This section provides a quick introduction of the 5 primary Nucleosides: Adenosine (A), Cytidine (C), Guanosine (G), Thymidine (T) and Uridine (U).
What Is Nucleoside? - A nucleoside is a nucleobase linked to a 5-carbon sugar (deoxyribose or ribose). Nucleosides are components of nucleotides, which is turn are used to build DNA and RNA.
When a nucleobase and a 5-carbon sugar go through a condensation reaction, they form a N-glycosidic bond, resulting a nucleoside and eliminating a water as shown below:
Notice that the 5-carbon sugar has 2 variations: deoxyribose and ribose. They differ at one node in the 5-node ring. A ribose has an extra Oxygen atom at one node as shown below (source: easybiologyclass.com):
There are 5 primary nucleosides based on 5 primary nucleobases.
1. Adenosine (A) = Adenine + 5-Carbon Sugar.
2. Cytidine (C) = Cytosine + 5-Carbon Sugar.
3. Guanosine (G) = Guanine + 5-Carbon Sugar.
4. Thymidine (T) = Thymine + 5-Carbon Sugar.
5. Uridine (U) = Uracil + 5-Carbon Sugar.
Here are the molecule structures of the 5 primary nucleosides (source: biologywise.com):
Table of Contents
Molecule Names and Identifications
►Nucleobase, Nucleoside, Nucleotide, DNA and RNA
What Is RNA (Ribonucleic Acid)
What Is DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)
DNA Primary Structure - Double Helix
What Is DNA/RNA Base and Sequence Pair
ChEMBL Database - European Molecular Biology Laboratory
PubChem Database - National Library of Medicine
INSDC (International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration)
HGNC (HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee)