Nucleoside

From Psychology Wiki

Community portal · Tasks to do · News · Help

Clinical · Educational · Ind&Org · Other fields · Professional · Transpersonal · World

Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language
Personality | Philosophy | Research Methods | Social | Statistics

Biological: Behavioural genetics · Evolutionary psychology · Neuroanatomy · Neurochemistry · Neuroendocrinology · Psychoneuroimmunology · Physiological Psychology · Psychopharmacology

---

Nitrogenous base	Nucleoside	Deoxynucleoside
Adenine	Adenosine A	Deoxyadenosine dA
Guanine	Guanosine G	Deoxyguanosine dG
Thymine	5-Methyluridine m5U	Deoxythymidine dT
Uracil	Uridine U	Deoxyuridine dU
Cytosine	Cytidine C	Deoxycytidine dC

Nucleosides are glycosylamines made by attaching a nucleobase (often referred to simply as bases) to a ribose or deoxyribose ring. Examples of these include cytidine, uridine, adenosine, guanosine, thymidine and inosine. In short, a nucleoside is a base linked to sugar.

Nucleosides can be phosphorylated by specific kinases in the cell, producing nucleotides, which are the molecular building blocks of DNA ( a base linked to sugar and one or more phospate) and RNA (A category title for viruses, Ribonucleic acid).

Nucleosides are produced as the second step in nucleic acid digestion, whereby nucleotidases break down nucleotides (such as the thymine nucleotide) into nucleosides (such as thymidine) and phosphate. The nucleosides, in turn, are subsequently broken down:

- in the lumen of the digestive system by nucleosidases into nitrogenous bases and ribose (or deoxyribose).

- inside the cell by nucleoside phosphorylases into nitrogenous bases, and ribose-1-phosphate (or deoxyribose-1-phosphate).

Nucleosides differ from nucleotides by having a hydroxyl group attached to carbon number 5 (the one that isn't in the ring) of the ribose, rather than one or more phosphate groups.

[edit] See also

• Nucleobase
• Nucleotide
• RNA
• Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)

Note: Nucleosides can be produced by combining nucleobases with deoxyribose rings as well.

This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Nucleoside. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.