are nucleotides amino acids
In contrast to purines, pyrimidines undergo ring cleavage and the usual end products of catabolism are beta-amino acids plus ammonia and carbon dioxide. Pyrimidines from nucleic acids or the energy pool are acted upon by nucleotidases and pyrimidine nucleoside phosphorylase to yield the free bases. The central dogma of molecular biology: DNA makes RNA makes Protein. DNA is a reference for proteins*, which are the functional molecules in cells. These are comprised of 20 unique amino acids, and each is coded for by a stretch of DNA known as a codon. Codons are always 3 base-pairs (nucleotides) in length. A nucleotide is made of a nucleobase (also termed a nitrogenous base), a five-carbon sugar (either ribose or 2-deoxyribose) depending on if it is DNA or RNA, and one or, depending on the definition, more than one phosphate groups. Nucleotides contain either a purine or a pyrimidine base. Ribonucleotides are nucleotides in which the sugar is ribose. Deoxyribonucleotides are nucleotides in which the sugar is deoxyribose. Nucleic acids are polymeric macromolecules made from nucleotide monomers. In DNA, the purine bases are adenine and guanine, while the pyrimidines are thymine and cytosine. We use for purine nucleotides the entire glycine molecule (atoms 4, 5,7), the amino nitrogen of aspartate (atom 1), amide nitrogen of glutamine (atoms 3, 9), components of the folate-one-carbon pool(atoms 2, 8), carbon dioxide, ribose 5-P from glucose and a great deal of energy in the form of ATP. There are two kinds of nitrogen-containing bases-purines and pyrimidines. Purines consist of a six-membered and a five-membered nitrogen-containing ring, fused together. Pyridmidines have only a six-membered nitrogen-containing ring. Nucleotides are organic molecules that serve as the monomers, or subunits, of nucleic acids like DNA and RNA. The building blocks of nucleic acids, nucleotides are composed of a nitrogenous base, a five-carbon sugar (ribose or deoxyribose), and at least one phosphate group. If codons were only 2 bases in length then the variety of codons that could be created would be less (only 16 unique sequences if there are still 4 nucleotides). More unique nucleotides would be required to get enough unique sequences to code for the 20 amino acids (as well as the STOP codons). For instance, to get 64 unique sequences using a 2-bases-per-codon system there would need to be 8 unique nucleotides. Adenine and guanine are found in both DNA and RNA. Hypoxanthine and xanthine are not incorporated into the nucleic acids as they are being synthesized but are important intermediates in the synthesis and degradation of the purine nucleotides. Purine and pyrimidine bases which are not degraded are recycled-i.e. reincorporated into nucleotides. This recycling, however, is not sufficient to meet total body requirements and so some de novo synthesis is essential. There are definite tissue differences in the ability to carry out de novo synthesis.
No