Nucleic acid are polymers of

Options

A. nucleotides
B. nucleosides
C. amino acids
D. sulphuric acids

Answer

A

Explanation

Just as proteins are polymers made of amino acid unit, nucleic acids are polymers made up of nucleotide unit linked together to form a long chain. Each nucleotide is composed of a nucleside plus phosphoric acid, `H_(3) PO_(4)`, and each nucleoside is composed of an aldopentose sugar plus and amine base.
In other words, we can say that nucleotides are composed of a nitrogenous base, a pentose sugar and phosphoric acid. The nitrogenous bases that are present in nucleotides are derivatives of two parent heterocylic compounds, namely pyrimidine and pyridine. Nucleotides and nucleosides are related to each other by the fact that controlled hydrolysis of a nucleotide gives a nucleoside and phosphoric acid. The nucleic acid are called acids mainly because of the presence of `-OH` group of the phosphate unit.