Nucleic acids

thumb|right|upright=1.33|The structure of the DNA double helix (type [[B-DNA). The atoms in the structure are colour-coded by element and the detailed structures of two base pairs are shown in the bottom right.]] thumb|Simplified diagram

thumb|A hairpin loop from a pre-mRNA. Highlighted are the nucleobases (green) and the ribose-phosphate backbone (blue). This is a single strand of RNA that folds back upon itself.

large biomolecules essential to known life

unit consisting of two nucleobases bound to each other by hydrogen bonds: either adenine–thymine or guanine–cytosine in natural DNA (additional types occur in RNA)

chemical process by which proteins lose their three-dimensional structure

succession of letters that indicate the order of nucleotides within a DNA (using GACT) or RNA (GACU) molecule

class of RNA that is not translated into proteins

Oligonucleotides are short DNA or RNA molecules, oligomers, that have a wide range of applications in genetic testing, research, and forensics. Commonly made in the laboratory by solid-phase chemical synthesis, these small fragments of nucleic acids can be manufactured as single-stranded molecules with any user-specified sequence, and so are vital for artificial gene synthesis, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), DNA sequencing, molecular cloning and as molecular probes. In nature, oligonucleotides are usually found as small RNA molecules that function in the regulation of gene expression (e.g. m

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biological molecule

thumb|425x170 px|Left: Unbound aptamer. Right: the aptamer bound to its target protein. The protein is in yellow. Parts of the aptamer that change shape when it binds its target are in blue, while the unchanging parts are in orange. The parts of the aptamer that contact the protein are highlighted in red.

multi-protein intracellular complex capable of degrading various types of RNA molecules

class of chemical compounds

(in a chain-like biological molecule, such as a protein or nucleic acid) supersecondary structure, which also appears in a variety of other molecules

polymer similar to DNA

chemical compound

similar DNA, RNA or protein sequences within genomes or among species

compound which is analogous (structurally similar) to naturally occurring RNA and DNA, used in medicine and in molecular biology research

organization of DNA and RNA molecules at different scales

basepairing interactions within a single nucleic acid polymer or between two polymers, list of bases which are paired in a nucleic acid molecule

chemical compound

RNA base pair that does not follow Watson-Crick base pair rules; guanine–uracil (G-U), hypoxanthine–uracil (I-U), hypoxanthine–adenine (I-A), or hypoxanthine–cytosine (I-C)

group of compounds

The study of how temperature affects the nucleic acid structure of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA)

three-dimensional shape of a nucleic acid polymer

article published 1953 describing the structure of DNA

modified RNA nucleotide in which the ribose moiety is modified with an extra bridge connecting the 2' oxygen and 4' carbon, providing increased stability against enzymatic degradation

type of DNA damage

variation of base-pairing in nucleic acids

Interactions between nucleic acid modules

Virome refers to the assemblage of viruses that is often investigated and described by metagenomic sequencing of viral nucleic acids that are found associated with a particular ecosystem, organism or holobiont. The word is frequently used to describe environmental viral shotgun metagenomes. Viruses, including bacteriophages, are found in all environments, and studies of the virome have provided insights into nutrient cycling, development of immunity, and a major source of genes through lysogenic conversion. Also, the human virome has been characterized in nine organs (colon, liver, lung, heart

techniques used to study nucleic acids: DNA and RNA

thumb|The sequence ATGG has two 3-mers: ATG and TGG. In bioinformatics, '''k-mers' are substrings of length k contained within a biological sequence. Primarily used within the context of computational genomics and sequence analysis, in which k-mers are composed of nucleotides (i.e. A, T, G, and C), k-mers are capitalized upon to assemble DNA sequences, improve heterologous gene expression, identify species in metagenomic samples, and create attenuated vaccines. Usually, the term k''-mer refers to all of a sequence's subsequences of length k, such that the sequence AGAT would have four monomers

type of RNA

universally accepted notation uses the Roman characters G, C, A, and T, to represent the four nucleotides commonly found in DNA

Modified genetic code