Question

Nucleic acids are polymers of
A.Nucleotides
B.Nucleosides
C.Nuclei of heavy metals
D.Proteins

Answer 1

Nucleic acid is essential to all forms of life. Nucleic acid stores genetic information and is used in protein synthesis. DNA and RNA are called nucleic acid. DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid RNA is ribonucleic acid. The nucleic acid is a polymer. The monomer units are joined together to give a polymer. So here we need to find the monomer units.

Complete step by step answer:
The nucleic acids are made up of nucleotide units.
It is a nucleoside in which many nucleotides are linked together or polymerized.
The nucleotides are the building blocks of nucleic acids
The phosphate group of one nucleotide is linked to the Sugar of another nucleotide.
Each nucleotide consists of a nitrogen-containing aromatic base, a pentose sugar (deoxyribose in the case of DNA and ribose sugar in the case of RNA), and a phosphate group.
The phosphate group is attached to the fifth carbon of the nitrogenous base.
The Nitrogen-containing bases are adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine in DNA, and thymine is replaced by uracil in RNA.
These nucleotide units are joined together through dehydration synthesis to form a polymer, nucleic acid.
P of one nucleotide is linked to the Sugar group. So, ${\text{S--P--S--P--S--P--}}$ on one strand. Thus, a phosphate sugar backbone is formed. In the case of DNA, 2 strands are present.
Therefore, we can conclude those monomer units of Nucleotides are dehydrated to get a polymer Nucleic acid (Polymerization).
Nucleic acids are polymers of nucleotides.
Thus, the correct option is (A).

Note: The sugar attached to the base without a phosphate group is a nucleoside. But there is a phosphodiester linkage in nucleoside joining the 5-hydroxyl group of one sugar to a 3-hydroxyl group of another. An enzyme nucleotidase breaks the nucleotide to form nucleoside and phosphate.