polymers and monomers

[Smiley_]

I always get confused on these can some one please help?

using DNA would be great is a nucleotide a monomer or polymer of dna?

[aishuwa1995]

A polymer is a compound with many linked repeating units. Therefore DNA is a polymer made of nucleotides. I remember it because "poly-" means many.

A monomer is the simplest unit of a polymer. So a nucleotide is the monomer. "mono-" means one.

[Smiley_]

A polymer is a compound with many linked repeating units. Therefore DNA is a polymer made of nucleotides. I remember it because "poly-" means many.

A monomer is the simplest unit of a polymer. So a nucleotide is the monomer. "mono-" means one.

thanks

[psyxwar]

thanks

Also, lipids don't really form polymers (because they don't form large compounds with repeating subunits). Instead, you have aggregations of smaller lipid molecules like the plasma membrane (which isn't considered a lipid polymer because it isn't one large lipid molecule, rather it's many small phospholipid molecules).