A nucleic acid is a long molecule made up of smaller molecules called nucleotides. Nucleic acids were discovered in 1868, when twenty-four-year-old Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher isolated a ...

While mRNA vaccines have received intense attention of late, another class of nucleic acid therapeutics has been growing steadily in recent years. Its impact could be equally profound. Nucleic ...

The nucleic acid molecules inherited by the living cell bear the plan of all the cell's protein molecules. It now appears that another kind of nucleic acid plays a key role in translating the plan ...

Nucleic acids are complex biological molecules that store and transmit genetic information in all living organisms. They are essential for the survival and reproduction of life on Earth. The two main ...

The sugar-phosphate backbone forms the structural framework of nucleic acids, including DNA and RNA ... in the 5' to 3' direction when the molecule is synthesized. In double-stranded DNA, the ...

More than 50 years passed before the significance of Miescher's discovery of nucleic acids was widely appreciated by the scientific community. For instance, in a 1971 essay on the history of ...

Scientists are now finding their own ways to put together nucleotides: to make a powerful new class of medicines based on nucleic acids. “This is true designer therapeutics,” says Brian Brown ...

"The importance of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) within living cells is undisputed" (Watson & Crick, 1953). This opening sentence of James Watson and Francis Crick's second major paper, published ...

Hidden within the genetic code lies the "triplet code," a series of three nucleotides that determine a single amino acid. How did scientists discover and unlock this amino acid code? Once the ...

DNA polymerase (DNAP) is a type of enzyme that is responsible for forming new copies of DNA, in the form of nucleic acid molecules. Nucleic acids are polymers, which are large molecules made up of ...