having or showing a disposition to avoid exertion; slothful: an indolent person. 2. Pathology. causing little or no pain; inactive or relatively benign: an indolent ulcer that is not painful and is slow to heal.
DNA and RNA are composed of nucleotides that are linked to one another in a chain by chemical bonds, called ester bonds, between the sugar base of one nucleotide and the phosphate group of the adjacent nucleotide. The sugar is the 3' end, and the phosphate is the 5' end of each nucleiotide.
In DNA, the monomers are called nucleotides, and these are linked together to form a polynucleotide chain that can be hundreds, thousands, or even millions of nucleotides in length. First we will study the structure of a nucleotide, and then we will examine how nucleotides are joined together to form a polynucleotide.