Question

How would you compare the phosphates, sugars, and bases of DNA and RNA?

Answer 1

Hint: DNA and RNA are the two nucleic acids made up of nitrogen bases, phosphates, and sugar. The nucleic acids are long-chain macromolecules by polymerization of nucleotides and these nucleotides joined by phosphate groups and pentose sugars.

Complete answer:
DNA is known as deoxyribose sugar in which the ribose sugar present in DNA lacks oxygen at its second position whereas RNA which is also known as Ribose nucleic acid does not lack any oxygen in sugar structure. Both DNA and RNA are made up of a nitrogen base, a phosphate group, and a sugar base, and the two nucleotides get connected with the help of phosphodiester bonds and form a long chain of macromolecules. The first nucleotide gets connected with the phosphate group at fifth carbon and with the next nucleotide, it gets connected at third carbon. The linkage of phosphate groups with the nucleotides of both RNA and DNA is the same. The nitrogen bases like adenine, guanine, and cytosine are the same in both of the nucleic acids but the nitrogen base thymine which is present in DNA will get replaced by uracil in RNA. At the first carbon of nucleic acids, the nitrogen base gets a bond, which after pairing forms a double helix structure of DNA, but this pairing was absent in RNA, therefore, RNA is a single-stranded nucleic acid.

Note:
Due to the absence of oxygen at the second carbon of ribose sugar, the DNA is more stable than RNA because the presence of oxygen makes hydroxyl groups due to which the structure becomes reactive. The purine and pyrimidine base is equal in RNA while it is not equal in number in DNA.