This Day in History: 06/19/1953 - Rosenbergs executed. In This Day in History video clip: On this day in 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, are executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths, by the electric chair.
The bond linking a phosphate group to a sugar of a another molecule is called a phosphodiester bond.
A phosphodiester bond occurs when exactly two of the hydroxyl groups in phosphoric acid react with hydroxyl groups on other molecules to form two ester bonds. Phosphodiester bonds are central to all life on Earth, as they make up the backbone of the strands of nucleic acid. In DNA and RNA, the phosphodiester bond is the linkage between the 3' carbon atom of one sugar molecule and the 5' carbon atom of another, deoxyribose in DNA and ribose in RNA. Strong covalent bonds form between the phosphate group and two 5-carbon ring carbohydrates (pentoses) over two ester bonds. The phosphate groups in the phosphodiester bond are negatively charged. Because the phosphate groups have a pKa near 0, they are negatively charged at pH 7.