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Nucleic acids are biopolymers, macromolecules, essential to all known forms of life. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomer components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main classes of nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). If the sugar is ribose, the polymer is RNA; if the sugar is deoxyribose, a version of ribose, the polymer is DNA.
Nucleotides are organic molecules composed of a nitrogenous base, a pentose sugar and a phosphate. They serve as monomeric units of the nucleic acid polymers – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), both of which are essential biomolecules within all life-forms on Earth. Nucleotides are obtained in the diet and are also synthesized from common nutrients by the liver.
The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of DNA and proteins. The term also refers to the hypothesis that posits the existence of this stage.
Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) is an artificially synthesized polymer similar to DNA or RNA.
Leroy "Lee" Edward Hood is an American biologist who has served on the faculties at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Washington. Hood has developed ground-breaking scientific instruments which made possible major advances in the biological sciences and the medical sciences. These include the first gas phase protein sequencer (1982), for determining the sequence of amino acids in a given protein; a DNA synthesizer (1983), to synthesize short sections of DNA; a peptide synthesizer (1984), to combine amino acids into longer peptides and short proteins; the first automated DNA sequencer (1986), to identify the order of nucleotides in DNA; ink-jet oligonucleotide technology for synthesizing DNA and nanostring technology for analyzing single molecules of DNA and RNA.
Har Gobind Khorana was an Indian-American biochemist. While on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for research that showed the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell and control the cell's synthesis of proteins. Khorana and Nirenberg were also awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in the same year.
Helicases are a class of enzymes thought to be vital to all organisms. Their main function is to unpack an organism's genetic material. Helicases are motor proteins that move directionally along a nucleic acid phosphodiester backbone, separating two hybridized nucleic acid strands, using energy from ATP hydrolysis. There are many helicases, representing the great variety of processes in which strand separation must be catalyzed. Approximately 1% of eukaryotic genes code for helicases.
In biochemistry, a ribonucleotide is a nucleotide containing ribose as its pentose component. It is considered a molecular precursor of nucleic acids. Nucleotides are the basic building blocks of DNA and RNA. Ribonucleotides themselves are basic monomeric building blocks for RNA. Deoxyribonucleotides, formed by reducing ribonucleotides with the enzyme ribonucleotide reductase (RNR), are essential building blocks for DNA. There are several differences between DNA deoxyribonucleotides and RNA ribonucleotides. Successive nucleotides are linked together via phosphodiester bonds.
A locked nucleic acid (LNA), also known as bridged nucleic acid (BNA), and often referred to as inaccessible RNA, is a modified RNA nucleotide in which the ribose moiety is modified with an extra bridge connecting the 2' oxygen and 4' carbon. The bridge "locks" the ribose in the 3'-endo (North) conformation, which is often found in the A-form duplexes. This structure provides for increased stability against enzymatic degradation. LNA also offers improved specificity and affinity in base-pairing as a monomer or a constituent of an oligonucleotide. LNA nucleotides can be mixed with DNA or RNA residues in a oligonucleotide.
Leslie Eleazer Orgel FRS was a British chemist. He is known for his theories on the origin of life.
Steven Albert Benner has been a professor at Harvard University, ETH Zurich, and the University of Florida where he was the V.T. & Louise Jackson Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. In 2005, he founded The Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology (TWIST) and the Foundation For Applied Molecular Evolution. Benner has also founded the companies EraGen Biosciences and Firebird BioMolecular Sciences LLC.
Alexander Rich was an American biologist and biophysicist. He was the William Thompson Sedgwick Professor of Biophysics at MIT and Harvard Medical School. Rich earned an A.B. and an M.D. from Harvard University. He was a post-doc of Linus Pauling along with James Watson. During this time he was a member of the RNA Tie Club, a social and discussion group which attacked the question of how DNA encodes proteins. He had over 600 publications to his name.
Norman Richard Pace Jr. is an American biochemist, and is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado. He is principal investigator at the Pace lab.
Olke C. Uhlenbeck is a Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder and at Northwestern University.
A codon table can be used to translate a genetic code into a sequence of amino acids. The standard genetic code is traditionally represented as an RNA codon table, because when proteins are made in a cell by ribosomes, it is messenger RNA (mRNA) that directs protein synthesis. The mRNA sequence is determined by the sequence of genomic DNA. In this context, the standard genetic code is referred to as translation table 1. It can also be represented in a DNA codon table. The DNA codons in such tables occur on the sense DNA strand and are arranged in a 5′-to-3′ direction. Different tables with alternate codons are used depending on the source of the genetic code, such as from a cell nucleus, mitochondrion, plastid, or hydrogenosome.
Donald Crothers was a professor of chemistry at Yale University in the United States. He was best known for his work on nucleic acid structure and function.
Juli Feigon is a Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she has been a faculty member since 1985. She was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2009. Her research focuses on structural studies of nucleic acids by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy along with other biophysical techniques.
Michal Hocek is a Czech chemist. He is a group leader at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences and a professor of organic chemistry at Charles University in Prague. He specializes in the chemistry and chemical biology of nucleosides, nucleotides, and nucleic acids.
Dr. Herbert Weissbach NAS NAI AAM is an American biochemist/molecular biologist.
Mary P. Edmonds was an American biochemist who made key discoveries regarding the processing of messenger RNA (mRNA). She spent most of her career at the University of Pittsburgh.
References
- ↑ Caruthers, M. (October 18, 1985). "Gene synthesis machines: DNA chemistry and its uses". Science. 230 (4723): 281–285. Bibcode:1985Sci...230..281C. doi:10.1126/science.3863253. PMID 3863253.
- ↑ Caruthers, M. H. (December 6, 2012). "The Chemical Synthesis of DNA/RNA: Our Gift to Science". Journal of Biological Chemistry. 288 (2): 1420–1427. doi: 10.1074/jbc.X112.442855 . PMC 3543024 . PMID 23223445.
- ↑ Goeddel, DV; Yansura, DG; Caruthers, MH (August 1978). "How lac repressor recognizes lac operator". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 75 (8): 3578–82. Bibcode:1978PNAS...75.3578G. doi: 10.1073/pnas.75.8.3578 . PMC 392828 . PMID 278973.
- ↑ "Marvin H. Caruthers Ph.D." Bloomberg.com. Retrieved September 12, 2016.
- ↑ Ellis, Caron Schwartz (October 17, 2003). "Marvin Caruthers' forte: Converting lab research into commercial ventures - BizWest". BizWest. Retrieved September 12, 2016.
- ↑ "Marvin H. Caruthers". National Academy of Sciences . Retrieved September 12, 2016.
- ↑ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter C" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved September 12, 2016.
- ↑ "NSTMF". NSTMF.
