nucleotides

1. The molecules that form the basic modular structure of the double helix of the DNA molecule. A nucleotide consists of three molecules — a sugar, a phosphate group, and a molecule called a base. If the double helix is a twisted ladder, the sugar and phosphates form the sides of the ladder and pairs of bases form the rungs. There are four different bases, usually abbreviated A, C, G, and T for adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine). The order of bases in DNA determines the genetic code.

Example Sentences

Amino acids, which make up proteins, or nucleotides, which make up DNA and RNA, are the same way.

Read more on Salon

Normally, uridine nucleotides would be made and consumed to help make the genetic letter codes and fuel cell metabolism.

Read more on Science Daily

These nucleotides also contain a tag called biotin that can be used to fish the RNA out of a cell.

Read more on Science Daily

Rather than processing the data using arithmetic operations, it is stored as a sequence of nucleotides -- the chemical building blocks of DNA.

Read more on Science Daily

It had previously been assumed that RNA can only copy itself by 'randomly' constructing sequences of around 200 nucleotides in length -- so-called ribozymes.

Read more on Science Daily