Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
MOLECULAR BASIS OF
INHERITANCE
RNA
RNA though it also acts as a genetic
materials1 in some viruses, mostly functions
as a messenger2 (mRNA).
RNA has
additional roles as well. It functions as
adapter3 (tRNA), structural4 molecule
(rRNA), and in some cases as a catalytic5
molecule (riboswitches, Ribozymes) or a
regulatory6 molecule (snRNA like miRNA
and siRNA).
DNA
DNA is a long polymer of
deoxyribonucleotides.
The length of DNA is usually defined as
number of nucleotides or base pairs.
STRUCTURE OF DNA
A nucleotide has three components a
nitrogenous base, a pentose sugar (ribose in
case of RNA, and deoxyribose for DNA), and
a phosphate group.
There are two types of nitrogenous bases
Purines (Adenine and Guanine), and
Pyrimidines (Cytosine, Uracil and Thymine).
A nitrogenous base is linked to the pentose
sugar through a N-glycosidic linkage to
form a nucleoside, such as adenosine,
guanosine, cytidine and uridine or its DNA
counterparts deoxyadenosine,
deoxyguanosine, deoxycytidine and
deoxythymidine.
For greater credibility, they used proteindigesting enzymes (proteases), RNAdigesting enzymes (RNases) and DNAdigesting (DNases) and found that only
DNases inhibited transformation, suggesting
that the DNA is the hereditary material once
again.
Observations: