The resulting RNA molecule, typically mRNA, carries the genetic message from the nucleus to the cytoplasm for protein synthesis. Nucleic acids are the foundation of genetic engineering techniques, ...

A nucleic acid is a long molecule made up of smaller molecules called nucleotides. Nucleic acids were discovered in 1868, when twenty-four-year-old Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher isolated a ...

not nucleic acid, but by the late 1940s, DNA was largely accepted as the genetic molecule. Scientists still needed to figure out this molecule's structure to be sure, and to understand how it worked.

a sugar molecule, and a phosphate group. Levene made his initial proposal in 1919, discrediting other suggestions that had been put forth about the structure of nucleic acids. In Levene's own ...