Hi Everyone!
I am little curious to understand the nucleotide polymerization concept.
My confusion is that, generally, the phosphate group is attached to the 3' of ribose sugar. But there are cases where phosphate is also attached to 2' of the ribose sugar.
Upon modification, the OH group is replaced by H from the 2' carbon to make deoxyribose in DNA and not from 3'.
So I was curious that why 3' carbon is predominantly selected? What additional benefits it confer? And what are the conditions where 2' carbon will be selected for phosphodiester bond in sugar?
Thank You for the support
Dear Amit Kumar
The 3′ carbon is predominantly used for phosphodiester bonds in nucleic acid synthesis because:
The 2′ carbon is rarely involved in phosphodiester bonds but can be found in cyclic nucleotides (e.g., cAMP, cGMP) and 2′-5′ linkages in specific RNA splicing events. However, using 2′ for backbone formation would destabilize the structure due to increased nucleophilicity and cleavage susceptibility, affecting polymerase activity.
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