Who discovered the monomers of nucleic acids? a. Phoebus Levene b. Friedrich Miescher c. Gerardus Johannes Mulder d. Jons Jacob Berzelius

a. Phoebus Levene

1. Nucleic acids are biomolecules essential to all known forms of life. They are composed of monomers called nucleotides, which are the basic structural units. Each nucleotide consists of three components: a sugar, a phosphate group, and a nitrogenous base. The sugars can be either ribose (in RNA) or deoxyribose (in DNA).
2. Phoebus Levene was a Russian-American biochemist who made significant contributions to understanding nucleic acids in the early 20th century. In 1909, Levene identified the components of a nucleotide and determined that they are connected in the order of phosphate-sugar-base. This was an important step in understanding the structure of nucleic acids. His further research led to the proposal of the "polynucleotide theory" which suggested that DNA and RNA are composed of long chains of these nucleotides.
3. It's also interesting to note that Friedrich Miescher was the first to isolate nucleic acids when he discovered a substance called "nuclein" in 1869, which later became known as DNA. However, it was Levene who later characterized the nucleotides that make up nucleic acids. Gerardus Johannes Mulder and Jons Jacob Berzelius are other notable chemists whose works predominantly predate the discovery of nucleic acids, but they are not directly credited with the discovery of the monomers of nucleic acids.