The basic repeating unit of nucleic acids are known as nucleotides. A nucleotide consists of three distinct chemical groups, a 5-carbon sugar (ribose or deoxyribose), a nitrogen-rich base - (cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A), thymine (T) in DNA or uracil (U) instead of T (in RNA), and phosphate.
Nucleotides are the subunits of DNA. The four nucleotides are adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. Each of the four bases has three components, a phosphate group, a deoxyribose sugar and a nitrogen-containing base. The nitrogenous base attached to the bases may be a double-ringed purine or a single-ringed pyrimidine.
