Each nucleotide is made up of three components:
- Nitrogenous bases: derived from purine and pyrimidine.
- Puric nitrogenous bases: they are adenine (A) and guanine (G). Both are part of DNA and RNA, and have a structure formed by two cycles similar to purine.
- Pyrimidine nitrogenous bases: they are thymine (T), cytosine (C) and uracil (U). They have a single ring structure similar to pyrimidine.
- In DNA: thymine and cytosine.
- In RNA: cytosine and uracil.
- Pentose: The five carbon monosaccharide can be ribose (RNA) or deoxyribose (DNA).
- Phosphoric acid, H3PO4: Each nucleotide can contain one (like AMP), two (like ADP), or three (like ATP) phosphate groups.
Depending on the nucleotide having ribose or deoxyribose, they are called ribonucleotides and deoxyribonucleotides.
Nucleotides are named by removing the final "a" from the nucleoside name and adding the term "5'-monophosphate" So we have to:
- The nucleotides of RNA are adenosine-5'-monophosphate (AMP), guanosine-5'-monophosphate (GMP), cytidine-5-monophosphate (CMP) and uridine-5'-monophosphate (UMP).
- The DNA nucleotides are the monophosphate deoxyadenosine-5'- (dAMP), the deoxyguanosine-5'-monophosphate (dGMP), the deoxycytidine 5'-monophosphate (dCMP) and deoxythymidin-5'-monophosphate (dTMP).
But normally, to name each nucleotide, we will use the initial of each nitrogenous base (A, G, C, T).