How to Use nucleic acid in a Sentence

nucleic acid

noun
  • Now, dozens of companies around the world make and ship synthetic nucleic acids en masse.
    — Emily Mullin, WIRED, 6 May 2024
  • Very low levels of nucleic acid to chase to discover the disease.
    — Helen Branswell, STAT, 4 Jan. 2020
  • In rapid testing, explained Procop, there are two kinds of tests — antigen tests and nucleic acid tests.
    — Joshua Bote, USA TODAY, 8 Aug. 2020
  • For most of life’s history, nucleic acids have handled the former job and proteins the latter one.
    — Quanta Magazine, 2 Nov. 2017
  • The protein structure of CAS, shown with nucleic acids bound.
    — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 2 Dec. 2023
  • The only tests that are acceptable are nucleic acid tests — not rapid antigen tests nor antibody tests.
    — Michael Hamad, courant.com, 23 Oct. 2020
  • Schools are closed and residents can’t leave the city without a recent negative nucleic acid test.
    — Trefor Moss, WSJ, 18 June 2020
  • Most of our tools for working with nucleic acids are specific to DNA.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 3 Feb. 2020
  • The city carried out more than 18 million nucleic acid tests during the 4-day period.
    — Bloomberg.com, 31 Mar. 2022
  • The first set of HIV drugs were nucleic acid inhibitors, known as chain terminator drugs.
    — William A. Haseltine, Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2020
  • The first step extracts RNA, the nucleic acid in the virus, from a specimen — a nasal swab placed in a liquid.
    — Guy Boulton, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7 Apr. 2020
  • Desvignes took a methodical approach, looking for patterns in the piles of nucleic acid data.
    — Melina Walling, The Arizona Republic, 11 June 2022
  • Testers at the labs run the swabs through expensive machines that tear apart any virus in the sample and scrutinize its nucleic acid, giving them a detailed map of its genome.
    — David Axe, Rolling Stone, 23 Dec. 2021
  • Residents line up for nucleic acid testing in Shanghai on Monday.
    — NBC News, 4 Apr. 2022
  • But experts say China's nucleic acid tests could be picking up genetic fragments of dead virus, which are no longer infectious.
    — Nectar Gan, CNN, 13 Nov. 2020
  • Phosphates are among the constituents of nucleotides, which in turn form the structural units of nucleic acids, like DNA.
    — Linda Shiner, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 Aug. 2024
  • In fact, coronavirus core proteins often share upward of 95% of their nucleic acid or protein sequences due to their close origins.
    — Andy Plump, STAT, 19 May 2021
  • Beijing also rolled out mass nucleic acid testing for the coronavirus, setting up 193 sampling booths across the city.
    — James Griffiths, CNN, 29 June 2020
  • In Shanghai, those who must leave the city, as well as those entering the city, must show a negative nucleic acid test taken in the last 48 hours.
    — Washington Post, 16 Mar. 2022
  • The code was incomplete, a sequence of programming phrases that bracketed a partial map of nucleic acids, amino acid chains, and proteins.
    — Elliot Ackerman, WIRED, 5 Feb. 2024
  • Gilbert was the co-winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on nucleic acids.
    — Daniel C. Schlenoff, Scientific American, 19 May 2020
  • But Watson went to Europe to study the biochemistry of nucleic acids like DNA.
    — Orianna Rosa Royle, Fortune, 9 Nov. 2025
  • The ladder is made up of four individual nucleic acids, like the letters that make up words in a book, strung together in long chains that spell out the instructions for proteins.
    — Brenda Goodman, CNN Money, 4 Nov. 2025
  • Most of those nine million samples have already been processed, according to a daily record of nucleic acid tests by Wuhan health authorities.
    — Wenxin Fan, WSJ, 25 May 2020
  • At the local hospital, medical staff took a phlegm sample and sent it for a nucleic acid test, the most common method in use around China to identify the virus.
    — Jeremy Page, WSJ, 10 Feb. 2020
  • The technique as proposed would work because nucleic acids like DNA are promiscuous.
    — Paul Voosen, Science | AAAS, 23 Mar. 2018
  • At this point, the reader preheats the cartridge to the temperature required for the nucleic acid amplification.
    — Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, 14 Feb. 2022
  • The tests counted in this figure are PCR genetic tests, molecular testing of nucleic acid, as well as antigen tests.
    — Laura Hancock, cleveland, 28 Dec. 2021
  • The new tool was required because databases of protein and nucleic acid sequences are expanding at a ridiculous rate, so the techniques for analyzing all of that data need to keep up.
    — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 2 Dec. 2023
  • Organisms use it to make amino acids and nucleic acids — the building blocks of proteins and DNA — among other vital molecules.
    — Quanta Magazine, 17 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'nucleic acid.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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