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Glite Dictionary
deoxyribose

deoxyribose

1 9.5
A sugar in DNA that has one less oxygen atom
  • noun
  • /diˌɒksɪˈraɪboʊs/
  • Specialized
: desoxirribosa
  • In DNA the sugar is deoxyribose and in RNA the sugar is ribose.

Examples

  • I wrench adenine and cytosine from their deoxyribose bases, quickly transpose them.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • In their Nature paper, Watson and Crick began We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid DNA.

  • What's quite remarkable is that when you have two deoxyribose in your DNA, it's nice and stable.

  • In the backbone of DNA, deoxyribose links the nitrogenous bases to phosphate groups.

  • Each nucleotide in DNA contains a deoxyribose sugar that differs from ribose found in RNA.

  • The chemical structure of deoxyribose is essential for the stability of DNA molecules.

Surface Forms

deoxyribose singular
deoxyriboses plural

Morphology

deoxyribose = ribose (semi-transparent) = deoxy + ribose

The prefix 'deoxy-' indicates the removal of an oxygen atom, but this chemical change may not be immediately clear to all learners.

Etymology

Deoxyribose breaks into de- meaning 'without' and oxygen, plus ribose, a simple 'sugar'. So deoxyribose is a 'sugar' that is missing one oxygen atom, which explains why DNA has deoxyribose instead of ribose.