Phosphodiester bond

Diagram of phosphodiester bonds (PO3−4) between three nucleotides. The 5' end has a 5' carbon attached to a phosphate, and the other end, the 3' end, has a 3' carbon attached to a hydroxyl group.

In chemistry, a phosphodiester bond occurs when exactly two of the hydroxyl groups (−OH) in phosphoric acid react with hydroxyl groups on other molecules to form two ester bonds. The "bond" involves this linkage C−O−PO−2O−C.[1] Discussion of phosphodiesters is dominated by their prevalence in DNA and RNA, but phosphodiesters occur in other biomolecules, e.g. acyl carrier proteins, phospholipids and the cyclic forms of GMP and AMP (cGMP and cAMP).[2]

  1. ^ "Phosphodiester bond". School of BioMedical Sciences Wiki. Archived from the original on 2017-06-30. Retrieved 2014-10-29.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :03 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).