nucleic acids can be found in dna in a cell.
nucleic acids can be found in dna in a cell.
where can nucleic acids be found in a cell?
dna
the term "nucleic acid" is the overall name for dna and rna, members of a family of biopolymers, and is synonymous with "polynucleotide". nucleic acids were named for their initial discovery within the nucleus, and for the presence of phosphate groups (related to phosphoric acid). although first discovered within the nucleus of eukaryotic cells, nucleic acids are now known to be found in all life forms including within bacteria, archaea, mitochondria, chloroplasts, viruses, and viroids. (note: there is debate as to whether viruses are living or non-living). all living cells contain both dna and rna (except some cells such as mature red blood cells), while viruses contain either dna or rna, but usually not both.
nucleic acid
in the late 1970s, building on the discovery of circulating dna in human blood by mandel and metais, leon and his collaborators developed a radioimmunoassay for measuring nanogram quantities of nucleic acids in serum. this technique enabled them to observe that cancer patients tended to possess a greater quantity of circulating dna in serum (on average) than their healthy counterparts. this led stroun to explore if other methods could be developed to not only detect the overall abundance of nucleic acids in patients with disease (and specifically cancer) but to also detect the disease-specific components of such circulating nucleic acids themselves. unlike bacterial transformations in plants and animal cells involving clear transfer of separately identifiable nucleic acids, it was not clear how malignancy in cancer arose, although there were many competing theories. stroun’s postulate that neoplastic malignancy was associated with the presence of tumor specific nucleic acids, led to extensive research by his group of circulating nucleic acids in cancer patients in the late 1980s.
maurice stroun