C5H10O4. A 5-carbon sugar, particularly important for its role in the genetic material DNA. The atoms marked * in the illustration are connected to phosphate groups in DNA.
Deoxyribose, also known as D-Deoxyribose and 2-deoxyribose, is an aldopentose — a monosaccharide containing five carbon atoms, and including an aldehyde functional group. It is derived from the pentose sugar ribose by the replacement of the hydroxyl group at the 2 position with hydrogen, leading to the net loss of an oxygen atom, and has chemical formula C5H10O4;
Ribose forms a five-member ring composed of four carbon atoms and one oxygen. Hydroxyl groups are attached to three of the carbons. The other carbon and a hydroxyl group are attached to one of the carbon atoms adjacent to the oxygen. In deoxyribose, the carbon furthest from the attached carbon is stripped of the oxygen atom in what would be a hydroxyl group in ribose. This alternative name merely refers to the fact that deoxyribose has a five membered ring consisting of four carbons and an oxygen and is more a structural description than a name.
Biological importance of deoxyribose
Ribose and 2-deoxyribose derivatives have an important role in biology. There are also important diphosphate dimers called coenzymes that purines and pyrimidines form an important class of compounds with ribose and deoxyribose. When these purine and pyrimidine derivatives are coupled to a ribose sugar, they are called nucleosides. In these compounds, the convention is to put a ′ (pronounced "prime") after the carbon numbers of the sugar, so that in nucleoside derivatives a name might include, for instance, the term "5′-monophosphate", meaning that the phosphate group is attached to the fifth carbon of the sugar, and not to the base. The bases are attached to the 1′ ribose carbon in the common nucleosides.
2-Deoxyribose and ribose nucleotides are often found in unbranched 5′-3′ polymers.
Genetic material in earthly life often contains poly 5′-3′, 2′-deoxyribose nucleotides, in structures called chromosomes, where each monomer is one of the nucleotides deoxy- adenine, thymine, guanine or cytosine.
DNA in chromosomes forms very long helical structures containing two molecules with the backbones running in opposite directions on the outside of the helix and held together by hydrogen bonds between complementary nucleotide bases lying between the helical backbones. The lack of the 2′ hydroxyl group in DNA appears to allow the backbone the flexibility to assume the full conformation of the long double-helix, which involves not only the basic helix, but additional coiling necessary to fit these very long molecules into the very small volume of a cell nucleus.
In contrast, very similar molecules, containing ribose instead of deoxyribose, and known generically as RNA, are known to form only relatively short double-helical complementary base paired structures.
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