Nucleic acid Nucleic acid Nucleic acids are the biopolymers, or small biomolecules, essential to all known forms of life. The term "nucleic acid" is the overall name for DNA and RNA. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomers made of three components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. If the sugar is a compound ribose, the polymer is RNA (ribonucleic acid); if the sugar is derived from ribose as deoxyribose, the polymer is DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Nucleic acids are the most important of all biomolecules. They are found in abundance in all living things, where they
Docosapentaenoic acid omega-3 fats in humans, such as in inflammation mechanisms. Docosapentaenoic acid Docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) designates any straight chain 22:5 fatty acid, that is a straight chain open chain type of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) which contains 22 carbons and 5 double bonds. DPA is primarily used to designate two isomers, "all"-"cis"-4,7,10,13,16-docosapentaenoic acid (i.e. 4"Z",7"Z",10"Z",13"Z",16"Z"-docosapentaenoic acid) and "all"-"cis"-7,10,13,16,19-docosapentaenoic acid (i.e. 7"Z",10"Z",13"Z",16"Z",19"Z"-docosapentaenoic acid). They are also commonly termed n-6 DPA and n-3 DPA, respectively; these designations describes the position of the double bond being 6 or 3 carbons closest to the (omega) carbon at the methyl end of the molecule and is